


Crownless Again Shall Be King

by FrancisWarlock



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 06:14:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrancisWarlock/pseuds/FrancisWarlock
Summary: A collection of roleplay starters/ short stories set in the Dragon Age Universe





	1. The Debt of Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Setting: the Dragon Age verse.  
> Timeline: starting around 9:30 Dragon and continuing well into post-Inquisition period  
> Worldstate: initially as the game portrays it in the year 9:30 Dragon. Major divergence from the canon is to be expected later on. In the course of the story, Thedas will be reshaped.  
> My lead men:  
> Yaevinn Lavellan: one of the two High Kings of the Dalish elves, a mage skilled in the long-forgotten magic of arcane warriors. He stands against Corypheus because the ancient magister threatens the entire world, but when it comes down to Yaevinn's personal beliefs, the Chantry represents evil almost as great as Corypheus. As the Inquisitor, he has his eyes set on two goals:  
> 1) dismantling the Chantry by any means necessary so it never regains its military strength and political influence.  
> 2) creation of an independent elven kingdom  
> In many ways, he is an idealistic visionary, but he's also ruthless and cunning enough to pursue alliances that can help him achieve his goals. His ruthlessness has a limit however. He hates slavers with a passion, so he would never come to an agreement with their kind.  
> Dafydd Sabrae: the Hero of Ferelden, a Dalish elf who has been imprisoned in the Circle since he was 13 years old. As a Warden, Dafydd considers himself a man forced. In this version of events, King Cailan has survived the battle of Ostagar and the goal of Dafydd's party is largely to reinstate him to the throne. Dafydd's reason to involve himself in the endeavor is the promise of personal freedom. A King's patent will allow him to retire from the Grey Wardens honorably and will keep him safe from templars who would otherwise try to hunt him down once he left the ranks of the Wardens. Dafydd knows Yaevinn very well and while their life paths do not cross again until the times of the Inquisition, they eventually work toward the same goals.  
> Around the year 9:30 Dragon, Yaevinn and Dafydd are not aware of each other's whereabouts and fate. Their stories unfold independently until they merge soon after Yaevinn becomes the Inquisitor.

**THE WINDMILL OF REDCLIFFE**

**THE 25 th DAY OF THE MONTH OF DRAKONIS, 9:30 DRAGON AGE**

 

The air smelled of fresh-ground grain, just as it should in the cellar of a windmill. Soothing noises of its work sounded distant and muffled here, perhaps due to the plump meal sacks that filled the storage space. This was a clean, dry and pretty place; nothing here revealed that just a night past, the mill had witnessed an attack of walking corpses. Its stone walls could have turned into rubble, its blades could have been burnt. _A wonder that it remains standing,_ Grey Warden Dafydd Sabrae thought, only to immediately banish the inane idea from his mind. In his nineteen summers, he had known too much evil to believe in wonders.

The windmill and the entire village of Redcliffe would have fallen to the undead, had he and his companions not arrived in time to lead the defense. The settlement had seen the relief of dawn come only because its defenders had not fled. The Maker whom quicklings so fervently worshiped had not worked a miracle, and yet the villagers had praised Him all the same. With great zeal they believed that their deity had smiled upon them and had sent them reinforcements to aid them in their hour of need. Many lives had been lost regardless the proclamations of the Maker's favor, but the Revered Mother had assured the survivors that the fallen would walk with Him henceforth and know the peace of His love.

The memory of her shameless lies hung in Dafydd's mouth. Blood and ash and bile, those he tasted on his tongue as he picked his way toward the entrance of a secret passage that would lead his party to the castle infested by foul, undead creatures.

He knew beyond a doubt that there was no peace in the Maker's love. The god had His followers spread His _love_ with flame and sword. It was His _love_ that had robbed Dafydd of his freedom when templars had captured him and had dragged him into the Circle six bitter years go. It had not mattered to them that he was a Dalish elf whose faith had no place for their Maker. He had magic, they had seen him use it, and it had sealed his fate. In the name of their Maker, they had treated him like a dangerous beast and had caged him for life.

Above him, the mill was grinding grain, its cleaners rattling, millstones rubbing, gears clacking and wheezing. It served its purpose, unquestioningly. Dafydd questioned the very reason why he was here, stubbornly heading to face yet more walking corpses. In the name of what? It was not a matter of duty. A man forced had no obligations to his captors. The Grey Wardens had coerced him to enter their ranks, just as the templars had forced him to submit to imprisonment in the Circle. He owed the Order nothing, and should have fled at the first opportunity. He would have been free again, had he run. He could have returned to his clan, could have reclaimed his position of the First to their Keeper. Instead, he found himself here, leading a ragtag band on a mission that had the makings of the greatest folly of his life. All that because he had not shed the values that Yaevinn Lavellan, the Honored Blade of his people, had taught him long ago. Honor and courage and loyalty. They had etched themselves too deeply into his soul to let him abandon a throneless king and his guileless bastard sibling after the battle of Ostagar had been lost. King Cailan and Warden Alistair, the two brothers from different mothers, were quicklings. But quicklings brave and kind and just. He could not betray their trust.

Their steps were thudding behind him now, the sound dull against the stone slab floor. The brothers were tall and muscled men, and their veridium gear was not helping them to walk on light feet. _Every undead creature in the passage must have heard us by now,_ Dafydd thought, stifling a sigh. Metal armor afforded the brothers greater protection than his woolens and leathers granted him. It suited their fighting style, which was not based on stealth. The two could surprise only the deaf, if that.

Morrigan, a Witch of the Wilds who had joined the party at her mother's behest did not make much noise as she moved, merely a soft rustle, but in the presence of louder companions it mattered less than little.

Dafydd's own steps made no sound. Every Dalish elf learned to walk any surface in silence by the age of eight. In shoes made by humans it had not been always possible, but he had been fortunate enough to find a secret Dalish stash near the Crossroads mere two days past. It had yielded a complete set of light gear. A gift of his people to one of their own. Every clan made regular contributions. In weapons, in armor, in blankets, even in cured meat preserved by a touch of magic. Every soul in every clan knew the signs that marked the trails to such stashes that dotted the land. And when in need, every one of his people could make use of them.

He had done so, hastily shedding robes that quicklings forced onto their mages. His throat had constricted when he had slowly run his fingertips over his new gear, savoring the feel of the textures he touched. Soft woolens and supple leather, a memory of home.

It felt most agreeable now to don a pair of bear hide leathers stuck in ankle boots of the same material. A soft shirt of jade-green lustrous cotton caressed his skin. Embroidery of stylized vines worked in golden silk adorned the piece. Over that came a padded woolen gambeson in the color of forests in the Dales. A broad satin sash encircled his slender waist. Ornamented with stylized apple blossoms, the striking piece of accouterments comforted him with its beauty. His kin who had included it in the stash knew that such little things helped one hold onto hope in dark times. So long as apple trees bloomed in spring, hope prevailed. He wore the sash with the same respect and love as he donned tooled leather vambrace and greaves ornamented with the motif of apple twigs abloom. The gear fit him loosely but belts and straps held everything in place. Once he acquired an elven blade, he would be whole again. For now he carried a simple longsword, a piece of iron whose blade was straight. It had to do. For all the faults of its design, it was a better weapon than a staff.

In noise and silence, they reached the door. Dafydd pressed Bann Teagan's signet ring in the lock. Soft clicks followed. From the wood and the stone. When the hidden mechanism fell silent, he slipped the ring in his coin pouch, and pushed the door open. The wood groaned against the floor. A moist breath of underground rushed against his face.

“A tunnel that goes under the entire lake,” said Morrigan, her voice full of genuine wonder. “Who would build such a thing?”

“Those who did not want to use boats,” Cailan and Alistair answered in unison.

Unwilling to get dragged into an exchange that could grow heated in a heartbeat, Dafydd entered the passage carved through red rock. His companions followed, with no more words on the matter. It might have surprised him, had he not smelled the pungent reek of putrefaction in the cold and heavy air. His nose wrinkled in disgust. It suffered here, overwhelmed with the stench, but he knew that his human companions had so far caught only a faint odor of rotten flesh. A wordless threat that had taken away their own words.

They pressed on through the narrow tunnel, its walls closing on them, weeping blood-red tears. Or so it seemed in the sputtering light of Morrigan's spell wisp. Their hearts were thundering. Dafydd heard his companions' fast heartbeat as well as his own. But he did not hear any hostile noise. No grunts and groans leaving undead mouths, no sounds of shambling steps.

It was not until the tunnel spat them into the dungeons that they encountered the undead. Three were loitering in the far corner of the torchlit hall. An unwary human eye might take them for castle guards. But Dafydd did not get fooled by Arl Eamon's colors that they still wore. He saw the dark stains on their breeches. They had soiled themselves when death had claimed them, or soon afterward when foul airs had bloated their bellies and had forced waste out of them. He smelled them, and his stomach roiled. There was no time to heave. The three snapped their heads toward them. A red glow of rage engulfed them, marking them for what they were as they ran through the hall to kill the living.

Iron hissed against leather as Dafydd and the two royal brothers drew their blades. A dull clack came from behind him. He knew that sound too. Morrigan had slammed the butt of her staff against the floor. The ground around the corpses shuddered. Then quaked. Its violent shaking threw the undead off their feet.

Dafydd's own magic rushed through him, its red-hot surge consuming all like wildfire. For half a heartbeat, it took his breath away. It seared his lungs, his throat, his mouth, but would not truly hurt him. Fire was his element, yielding to his will. In a raw voice, he called out a word of power, “Loisgidh!” Flames sprang from the palm of his free hand. He packed them into a ball. With a warcry on his lips, he hurled the fire at the corpses. On impact, the flames roared, lashing outward, swallowing up all three undead.

A sour odor of decay and shit tangled with the stench of charred flesh. The undead reeled onto their feet. Fire fed on their remains and perhaps even on their rage as they lunged forward in a maddened effort to reach the living.

“Saighead!” he shouted another word of power, drawing his free arm back, palm turned to the foes. A purple bolt of arcane force burst out of his flesh. Faster than an arrow it flew, then buried itself in the chest of the nearest corpse. It did not stop the creature.

A breath of winter brushed past him. Goosebumps spilled over his flesh, despite his inner heat. For the flames, he could not see Morrigan's spell land. Only a cloud of steam veiling one of the foul creatures said where her ice clashed with his fire. The boiling steam killed the demon inhabiting the decaying vessel. The empty shell fell, no longer moving.

The flames blazing in him wanted out. He released them in another well-aimed fireball. The corpse that had been hit by the arcane bolt staggered, then went to its knees. The third was coming at them, its face blackened, its flesh sloughing off the skull. There were no eyes in that face, only empty sockets aglow with red rage. No nose, only a hole filled with smoke. No lips, only teeth bared in the expression of fury.

The time for iron had come, and Cailan stepped forward, flourishing his sword. The creature impaled itself on the blade, oblivious to anything but its goal. It wanted to reach his neck, to strangle him, to end his life. They had learned it the night past from others of its kind. This one was flailing its burning arms still when a blow of Alistair's sword removed its head. The head banged against the floor, and the burning body faltered on its feet. Cailan yanked his blade free.

The undead toppled forward, its fall giving the king just enough time to leap out of reach of the flames. The corpse hit the ground. Its remains sprawled on slabs of stone, fire veiling them like a shroud. The body was not moving anymore. It was still, as dead should be. The fire abated quickly. It had taken its fill. It was done with its feast. Only brittle brown bones and bits of black flesh remained of something that had used to be a man.

Staring at the heap, Dafydd considered whether undead were worse than darkspawn. The former did not recoil from any pain, the latter spread the Taint. Both fed on living flesh. He could not decide.

“Lady Morrigan, I must ask it of you to refrain from making the ground quake while we are in the castle,” Cailan demanded from behind the visor of his helm. “It is my uncle's seat, and it will please him enormously to see its walls still standing when he recovers.”

“Also, it would be good if it didn't tumble on our heads,” Alistair added, giving a wide berth to the fallen foes as he carefully ventured forth.

“Indeed,” Morrigan agreed, only a flash in her pale amber eyes hinting at her irritation. “The next time we are under attack, I will refrain from casting spells so the precious castle comes to no harm.”

“Just cast something else,” Alistair advised in a distracted tone, advancing farther down the hall. “That grease spell. Should not leave a lasting damage.”

“Last time I cast it, you and your brother slipped and landed on your arses,” Morrigan reminded him with relish, a little smirk playing on her full lips. “But I must concur, it did not leave a lasting damage. Sadly.”

Cailan cleared his throat, and that was all. The raven-haired witch had a way to silence him. Her sharp tongue might have been at fault. Or her bosom, straining under a revealing velvet robe which gave her about as much protection on the battlefield as her skin itself. At least from her waist up. But, she was not entirely naked, and the king clearly found the view of her pale, half-covered breasts tempting enough to put up with her barbs.

Swords drawn and the staff ready, they all followed Alistair down the hall.

Dafydd's stomach kept turning, not on account of the stench lingering in the stale air. The hall they walked was framed with cells from both sides. They seemed empty, but it didn't quieten him. They had not always been abandoned. Who had suffered behind heavy doors dark with oxen blood? Who had perished behind rusty iron bars? He thought of Anders, his friend locked up in the dungeons of the Circle. Not far from here; Kinloch Hold stood on Lake Calenhad, too. A year in the solitary was the punishment for Anders' latest escape. By the age of twenty, he had broken free six times. Six times he had been brought back. Six times he had been lashed and beaten. Six times mage bane had been poured in his wounds so he would not heal himself. And it had not killed his thirst for freedom. But, there was no freedom to be won so long as the templars had the phylactery with his blood that let them hound him down every time. Dafydd knew that. Anders refused to accept the fact. By the age of twenty-one, he would be a broken madman. No one could survive a year in the solitary and remain sane.

A bitter taste of bile and hatred rose through Dafydd's throat. The Chantry caused such misery. Or the Maker did. And he hated both so much that the feeling shook his limbs.

It was when a familiar voice rasped from a cell, “Is there... Is there anybody alive there?”

“Jowan?” Dafydd breathed. A leap, and he was pressing himself against iron bars blocking his access to his other friend from the Circle.

“Dafydd?” In the corner of the cell, a heap of bloodstained mage robes slowly shifted in musty straw. “Is that really you?”

There _was_ Jowan in the soiled clothes, balled upon himself perhaps in pain, perhaps in a vain effort to escape the reality by withdrawing inside. He was straining to change his position, and Dafydd feared what he would see once his friend succeeded. Gripping the bars tight, he rattled them as if that could dislodge them.

“To break the lock might work better,” Morrigan said, pressing her hand against his arm, pushing him out of the way.

She was right. Sheathing his sword, he stepped aside so she could work her magic. Her elegant fingers hovered over the rusty lock. A white cloud appeared under her palm. It was cold like a snowy night, and chilled the air even a few steps away. Frost engulfed the lock, shimmering in brilliant white. Realizing what she intended to do, he quickly swept the shape of Jowan's body with a broad gesture of his hand. A diaphanous sphere of protective force enveloped his friend. Morrigan retreated, and he followed. Well acquainted with the power of spells by now, Cailan and Alistair held themselves back on their own. They no longer needed a warning. Still, Dafydd cast the shield around the entire party as well. Its force felt warm and comforting against his skin, and he was glad of it, for it meant that it held Jowan in the same gentle embrace. Morrigan aimed the blade of her staff at the lock. Something cracked like a crumbling rock. The staff launched a stone ball. Half a heartbeat later, the stone shattered the frozen iron. Sharp shards of metal and chips of stone flew through the air, to bounce off the protective shields.

The path was open. Mere moments passed before Dafydd knelt by his friend's side. Blood, piss, old sweat, he smelled all of that as he supported him through the effort to sit up. Coarse hisses of pain kept leaking from Jowan's chapped lips. Dafydd's eyes fell on the source of the agony. His friend's fingers had been broken, and were not healing well. Swollen tissue strained under discolored skin, stained by blood that had flown from raw flesh after his nails had been torn away. Dafydd's lips twisted with compassion. “Leigheas,” he whispered, running a hand a breath over the injuries. White tendrils of gentle healing magic sprang forth and in an instant coiled around Jowan's digits in soothing spirals.

Jowan shuddered with relief. His body felt so frail in Dafydd's arms. He had never been a burly man, but now... he was skin and bones and little more. His dark hair had turned into a study of grease. An unkempt beard had sprouted on once clean-shaven cheeks and jaw, and Dafydd tried not to see the flakes of old vomit trapped in its curls. His friend was still wearing the robes in which he had made his escape. His piss had drenched them more than once, the stains near the groin stiff and all-telling. His freedom had not lasted long and fortune had not been kind to him.

Dafydd held him close with one arm, his free hand fumbling for a skin with watered wine. Jowan needed to drink, and eat. A bit of cured meat, a few bites of double-baked bread. Something that his stomach would hold down. It could not wait. Healing magic could not mend everything; he needed to regain his strength and for that he must have good, wholesome food. It was all that Dafydd cared about, the mission and the undead and the entire world forgotten. He didn't even hear his companions come close.

“You must be the mage who has roused the dead from their sleep,” Alistair said, just with a touch of hesitation to his voice.

“I have done no such thing.” Jowan leaned his weight against Dafydd. “Although I have been tortured for that, too.”

“No one will torture you again,” Dafydd promised hoarsely, and brought the uncorked skin to his friend's lips. “There, take small sips. Slowly.”

Jowan obeyed. Parched as he was, he soon replaced sips with drafts.

Dafydd had to pull the skin away, to give his friend's stomach a chance to adjust. It met with faint moans of protest. “There will be more, in a little while,” he soothed.

“Have you truly poisoned Arl Eamon?” Morrigan asked.

Dafydd opened his mouth to snap at his companions to refrain from such groundless accusations. Arlessa Isolde had either lied outright or had at least obscured the truth. Had they not all warned Bann Teagan that he might walk straight in a trap if he yielded to her pleas and returned to the castle with her? Why put such trust in her words now? But before he could give voice to any objections, Jowan said, “I was instructed to, by Teyrn Loghain. I was told Arl Eamon was a threat to Ferelden.”

A swollen dryness spread through Dafydd's mouth and throat. There wasn't a single worse thing that Jowan could have done, not in Cailan's and Alistair's eyes at least.

“No doubt you were promised a reward,” Alistair wagered.

Dafydd's eyes were pinned on Jowan, but he did not miss the coldness in Alistair's voice. And a part of him understood. His friend had just confessed to making an attempt on Alistair's guardian's life. It was not a thing that Alistair could forgive.

“He promised... to settle matters with the Circle,” Jowan said, clinging to Dafydd, his body begging not to be abandoned. “I thought I would redeem myself, but he has forsaken me.”

“He is an apostate and a poisoner,” Cailan declared in his kingly voice. “Let him rot here until high justice can be served.”

Dafydd snapped his head toward him. “Once he was an innocent man who fell in love with a sweet, young woman,” he said. His moldavite-green eyes turned hard as he glared at the throneless king. “All that he wanted was a small farm where they could live and work and grow old in each other's arms. It is an impossible dream for a mage confined in the Circle. Injustice breeds injustice.”

It did not move the king. His feet planted wide in the musty straw, one hand laid on the pommel of his sword, the other on his hip, Cailan towered there in his most royal bearing. Torchlight limned him from behind, giving him a fiery halo. His gear – its scales bronze-enameled to bring out the natural green sheen of veridium on the gorget and tassets – lacked the magnificence of his silverite suit of armor gilt with volcanic gold, but he still was a king, and no disguise could ever hide it. He had removed his helm, and nothing but shadows obscured his noble face from view. A dye had turned his golden hair raven-black, but his celestine-blue eyes stayed the same. Despite their cool color, their gaze usually felt warm. Cheerful and kind. But now their stare was cold like icicles. Cailan the man had retreated. Cailan the king had come. And never before had Dafydd seen the king to be so dispassionate, so removed from suffering of his subjects.

Alistair stood right beside his brother, faithfully mirroring his posture. And his hazel eyes were just as cold as his brother's. When they shared feelings, the same expressions appeared on their faces; thus it was clear now that he concurred with Cailan's view.

Only Morrigan seemed not to judge Jowan harshly. Regarding him with a thoughtful expression in her eyes, she asked, “How did you get inside the castle in the first place?”

“Arlessa Isolde hired me to tutor her son,” Jowan told her, a sudden blush spreading on his face. “Connor has magic–”

Cailan flinched. “Connor, a mage? I cannot believe that.”

“I speak the truth,” Jowan insisted, his voice broken with exhaustion. “The Circle would drag him away, forever. She needed... an apostate to teach him to hide his affliction.”

Desperate to turn Cailan's attention away from Jowan, Dafydd asked, “Could he have torn the Veil? Could he have given demons a path to enter the living world?”

“By accident, perhaps,” Jowan sighed. “He is young, and lacks the skills to cast anything but the simplest spells.” His hands fell to his groin, trying to hide the piss stains from Morrigan's view. “I never meant for it to end like this.”

“Let the man go,” Morrigan said, with an unusual softness. “He has paid for his choices already.”

Cailan turned his head toward her. The veins and tendons in his neck stood out. “He has poisoned my uncle in cold blood. Justice and law demand that he be boiled alive.”

Hearing that, Jowan sagged in Dafydd's hold. His face went milk-white under a layer of grime, and only a quiet moan escaped from his lips. He did not even try to plead for mercy.

“I have seen men do things as terrible as he did, and worse. Out of conviction or under command,” Dafydd said instead of him, his eyes bright with anger as he pinned Cailan with his stare. “None have been punished for their cruelties, some are hailed as heroes. He has acted on Teyrn Loghain's order. On the order of a man who has declared himself Regent for the Queen, mind you. To Jowan, Teyrn Loghain's word represented the interests of Ferelden.” He made the smallest pause before he scoffed, “He has been tortured for his actions on Arlessa Isolde's demand. Does torture serve justice and law? Or is it a tool of vengeance?”

Cailan gaped at him. “You want me to show him mercy?”

It was all going from bad to worst. Dafydd had been careful not to reveal Cailan's true identity, but the king did as king does, and Jowan knew perfectly well whose uncle Arl Eamon was. The disguise had ceased to serve in this cell. If Cailan the man would not listen, Dafydd needed words that would reach the king. “It is not a question of what I want, but of what you want,” he said. “To be loved or to be feared?”

Cailan swallowed hard and dropped his gaze. The veins in his neck throbbed. His hand tightened on his sword. A huff tore out of him before he looked at Jowan. “You will give every ounce of your effort to cleansing this place of evil,” he commanded. “If Arl Eamon and Connor survive, I shall commute your sentence to beheading.”

It was too little, and Dafydd wanted to tell him. If _he_ was to help Cailan win back his throne, if he had already saved Redcliffe for Cailan's kin, surely the king could spare one man.

But Jowan shook his head at him and closed a hand on his. “Thank you for your mercy, Your Majesty,” he said in a quiet yet steady voice, accepting his fate.

There was nothing to be done for it. Not immediately. _There must be a better chance to appeal to his kindness,_ Dafydd thought, swallowing protests burning in his mouth. First, Arl Eamon and Connor had to be found and rescued. Cailan would not be swayed until his family was safe.

To cleanse the castle of evil proved to be slow and arduous work. Death lingered within its thick walls, stained its soft carpets, smeared its parqueted floors. Even the kitchens reeked of decay, and flames stirring in the hearths smelled like funeral pyres. The place appeared empty but for the undead roaming its halls in search of warm flesh and blood.

They faced waves of them; Dafydd, Cailan, and Alistair meeting each attack with steel, Morrigan aiding them with ice and stone, Jowan limping after them, casting arcane shields for protection.

Anger aimed at Arlessa Isolde flattened Dafydd's mouth a bit more every time he heard Jowan's bare feet slap the floors. It meant all the time spent out of skirmishes. The footfalls didn't sound regular. They were faltering and weak, and their uneven pace bespoke the pain behind every one of them. A closer examination back in the cell had revealed that his ankles had been crushed, and while Dafydd's healing magic had mended all that it could, a full recovery would demand more thorough workings and rest. Rest which they could not afford right now, rest which might never be granted, regardless whether the rescue attempt succeeded or failed.

When Dafydd's full lips became a thin, pale scar on his face, the ire moved inside his mouth, forcing him to grind his teeth. Heat kept flushing through his body, his inner fires screaming to be unleashed. He could not find relief in immolating the undead. The castle could too easily be burned to a cinder, which would not aid anyone's cause. In stead of fire, he used the ugly piece of iron in his sword hand and hacked at creatures ravenous for his life force. The rock armor spell toughened his skin and arcane shields deflected most assaults. But his gambeson got rent by claws and rotting fingers of the undead, a fact that most definitely did not improve his seething temper.

It was on the main floor that his sensitive ears caught distant tones of music. Its notes had a twisted ring to them, a dark and sinister undercurrent flowing right beneath the melody that might have sounded cheerful otherwise. This music was not of the living world. It shared its nature with the evil that had invaded the castle. One could lead them to the other.

Following the ominous tune, they reached a mighty oaken door, so tall that only a man standing on another man's shoulders might be able to touch its top. Above the door frame, the coat of arms of House Guerrin graced the stone wall. A proud gray tower rearing atop a ruby rock. The rock bled. Streams of red were running down the masonry, spilling onto the door, soaking its wood. The music was coming from its other side, mockingly loud now.

“The great hall,” Alistair murmured. “If there is anybody alive still, they will be inside.”

Whether they were any survivors remained uncertain, but whatever waited behind the door, it knew of their presence. Dafydd tried to enter the hall. Unsurprisingly, the door was locked. Refusing to be led on a merry chase of searching for another access route, he said, “Morrigan, if you would.”

The witch understood. Spells that had worked on a rusty lock in the dungeons proved their worth again. Cailan didn't protest against the damage done upon his uncle's property. As soon as the lock shattered, he and Alistair rushed to throw the door open. The heavy leaves surrendered to their strength, and momentum carried them inside. Dafydd and Morrigan followed to heel. To break in fast and cast spells later was the only sensible way.

In the hall, the two brothers skidded to an abrupt halt. It forced Dafydd to swerve from his course so he wouldn't bump against Alistair's back. He heard Morrigan swear under her breath and felt the protective embrace of an arcane shield half a heartbeat before he spied corpses heaped upon a rich carpet that marked the way to the dais. They did not move. These dead had been torn limb from limb. The cream carpet under and around them had turned rusty brown, soaked with their blood and gut contents. Something had strewn their innards far down the bloody carpet, like flowers down the temple aisle.

A memory burned through his mind. When he had been a child, his clan had once visited ruins of an ancient temple in the Dales. Keeper Marethari had told him then of the temple's past. She had spoken of the ancient kings of their people, she had spoken of ceremonies of their namings, their enthronements, their weddings, and their departures for the long sleep. Each milestone of their lives had been marked with apple blossoms strewn down the temple aisle, the sweet, gentle scent symbolizing hopes everlasting.

The entrails spread here looked like a macabre, mocking imitation of old elven rituals. He knew before he looked in the faces of the dead what he would see. And he looked, for he could not do otherwise. The faces that had once been graced with flawless beauty were now ruined by deep marks left behind by claws and fangs. Pain suffered before death stayed imprinted in their grimaces. They lay here, their teeth clenched in lipless mouths, for their soft lips had been chewed away. And so he saw the bloodstained teeth. Small and perfect in their shape, their pearly whiteness softly lustrous even in death. These dead were elves, his own people. And every head that he saw lacked ears. Congealed blood coated the stumps, matted tangled strands of once shiny hair.

The taste of bile in Dafydd's throat and mouth grew overwhelming, the wrath in him white-hot, blinding.

He became one with his element, a bright blaze. The smell of his magic filled the air, all flames and burning resin. There was no smoke in its scent, just the brilliant pureness of fire and the spiciness of resin. It always hung around him, as if his very skin gave it off. Perhaps it was his own scent in truth, so entwined was his flesh and magic. When his power rested, its fragrance felt peaceful and dreamy and mellow. Like a tame campfire under a starlit night sky. But when wrath consumed him, his power blazed like wildfire and there was no peace in its scent.

Now it burned down the reek of death. And the sinister tune grew louder in response. The evil knew of his ire, and challenged him to unleash it. He fought the urge to answer the challenge. For the flames released in fury would inevitably scorch Bann Teagan, capering round the gruesome heap. The man was not himself. His rich clothes smeared with blood and shit of the deceased, he was doing somersaults amongst the remains, squishing viscera under his hands and feet. The ghastly music seemed to hold him in thrall.

Dafydd's gaze flitted to the dais. Six guards loitered by the walls, but he paid them little mind. His attention was on a boy, perhaps eleven summers old, who was jumping there up and down, clapping in delight over Bann Teagan's performance. Arlessa Isolde stooped by the child's side, her head hung low.

_Connor._ _Mad or possessed?_ Dafydd thought, starting toward the dais. The footfalls of his companions squelched behind him. In elven blood.

The tune died away. Bann Teagan scampered on all fours to the child's feet. There he sat down like a faithful dog, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. The boy patted his head.  “Good pet, good Uncle,” he said, the words coming out of his lips in an unearthly, dark rumble. There was an odd echo to every syllable, as if two mouths were speaking, not quite in unison.

_Possessed,_ Dafydd decided, walking close and closer to the dais. His heartbeat turned deafening. He could kill the demon. Right here, right now. He could avenge his people, lying dead and mangled behind him. If he did so, Connor would die. And Jowan would be boiled alive.

The demon turned to face him. Its eyes were a dark, undulating brightness in which the pupils seemed no larger than pinheads. A scowl twisted the face of its vessel as it peered at Dafydd. “This is the one who has defeated my soldiers,” it acknowledged. “And now it is glaring at me. What is it, Mother?”

Arlessa Isolde raised her head, sparing Dafydd a single look before her bloodshot eyes darted away. Her cheeks were flushed, marked with tear stains. “This is an elf, Connor,” she answered in a trembling voice. “We had them here in the castle...”

“You still have,” Dafydd seethed, his hand painfully tight on his sword. “Dead.”

“Oh, I remember,” the demon said. “I had their ears cut off, and fed them to the dogs.” Touching the ears of its vessel, it laughed. The cruel noise was spilling out of Connor's mouth, and the demon looking through his eyes never turned its stare from Dafydd. Not even when it added, “The dogs must be hungry again, Mother. We should feed them. Now.”

Arlessa Isolde fell to her knees, outstretching her arms in supplication. “Connor, I beg you. Don't hurt anyone.”

_Had you begged before they died?_ Dafydd's lips curled in a sneer.

It was when the lad reeled in the most mundane fashion. There was nothing unearthly in his sudden clumsiness. He caught his step and rubbed his brow, like someone trying to remember... “Mother, Mother... where am I?” he asked in a small voice of a small boy.

“Connor, sweetheart,” Arlessa Isolde gushed, crawling to him on her knees.

“Get away from me, fool mortal!” the demon boomed. “You are boring me.”

“Not only you,” Morrigan mumbled.

If Connor had truly broken through, he was gone. His body served the demon yet again. And Arlessa Isolde scrambled back to her feet. “Please, do not hurt my son,” she implored, addressing nobody in particular. “He doesn't know of things he does.”

_You knew of the things he did. You had Jowan tortured for your own offspring's doing. You wanted him to undo the wrongs your whelp caused._ Dafydd could barely breathe, his breath a painful ball stuck behind his breastbone. “So, _he is_ the evil force you spoke of,” he said, “and you have protected him all the time.”

“Don't you dare say that! It was him!” she screamed, pointing a finger at Jowan. “He has summoned the demon. Connor would never do that. My sweet boy has just wanted to help his father.”

“And made a foolish deal with the demon to do so,” Morrigan reflected.

“It was a fair bargain. Father is alive!” the demon roared. Raising a clenched fist, it looked at Cailan. “Now _I_ will conquer the world, and sit on the throne you have lost. I shall be all the things you could not be, Cousin.”

“I think not,” Cailan uttered darkly. A quiet swish followed his words as he tried a cut with his sword.

“It is spoiling my sport!” the demon shrieked. “Kill it!”

Bann Teagan sprang to his feet. The guards rushed forward, drawing their blades. All enthralled, all ready to obey the creature's command. Covered by them, the demon darted through the door behind the dais. Arlessa Isolde started after it. It was fleeing, but Dafydd couldn't chase after it or her. Not when seven men were trying to kill the king, Cailan's own uncle amongst them.

His sword drawn, he stood with Cailan and Alistair to meet the onslaught.

The foes hadn't yet left the dais when a salty and thick smell of lard hit Dafydd's nose. Morrigan had cast the grease spell. All seven foemen slipped on the slick layer. Bann Teagan reeled but caught his balance as did two of the guards. The rest fell with heavy thuds.

Chaotic force hummed through the hall like a swarm of bees, answering Jowan's call. A shimmering, sickly green field engulfed Bann Teagan as he struggled to leave the slippery grounds. In an instant, his muscles went slack, being sapped of vigor. He couldn't move, and it was for the best.

“Losgadh lann!” Dafydd called out, and his fire rushed into his sword, veiling its blade in flames. The magic touched the weapons of his companions too, and the two guards who had meantime reached the edge of the dais faltered in their attack.

A puff of pure winter brushed past Dafydd.

One of the hesitating guards stiffened under a thick layer of glaze ice. The other took a step back before blood spouted from his mouth. The man's eyes went wide with shock and pain. A gurgle leaked from him along his life blood. He dropped his weapon, and his hands shot to his throat and mouth. They could not halt the flow that was draining him of life. His life force spiraled up in a glowing column of red mist. It was going to fall on Jowan. To restore his health and vigor.

The four other guards had meantime risen to their feet. The grease did not let them rush. They had to traverse the slippery grounds slowly lest they fall again.

“Saighead!” Dafydd shouted. His muscles sang with magic as he drew his free arm back. The tingle in his palm flared, the charge powering an arcane bolt. Forth it flew, purple and deadly. It caught a foe through his neck. The man tottered under the impact that ripped through his gorget and made the ragged edges of its steel enter his throat. He let out a pained wheeze.

But Dafydd barely heard it for a loud crack. A stone swished past him like a cannon ball. It collided with the frozen man and shattered the ice that he had become. Chunks of frozen flesh and chips of stone exploded in all directions.

Cries of pain rose over the dais. Bann Teagan didn't scream, but Dafydd saw his purple velvets darken around the shoulder where he had been hit.

“Leigheas!” Dafydd shouted, his free hand flaring in Teagan's direction. White tendrils of healing magic lashed forward. In a heartbeat they crossed the distance, wormed through the paralyzing field around the man and sank into his wound, mending the violated tissue.

More Dafydd could not do for him. Three guards had just leaped down from the dais. The time for iron had come. He took the foe to the left, trusting Cailan and Alistair to engage the other two.

The enemy advanced against him without a battle cry. Perhaps he could not cry out for a chip of stone embedded in his jaw. It must have shattered the bone. Blood was spilling out of his half-open mouth, trickling down his chin, dripping off. His eyes were mad with pain. His sword raised high above his head, he lunged forth and cut down in a ferocious blow aimed to slash Dafydd's breast. Dafydd displaced it with the flat of his burning blade. Without losing a beat, he stepped forward, and touched his left knee to the right leg of his foe. With his free hand, he thrust to the man's elbow. Summoned by a focused thought, fire flared out of his hand, into the joint under his palm. The flame seared through the chainmail, skin and flesh. An animal noise gurgled out of the wounded foe. The shove and sudden agony folded him over. He struggled to catch his balance, but tripped over Dafydd's leg. He never regained his footing; a quick blow to the back of his exposed neck ended his life.

Dafydd spun on his heel, his eyes scanning the battlefield. He caught a sight of a man impaled upon Alistair's sword. His assistance wasn't needed there. The corpse was limp as the dead should be. Cailan's foe lay prone and motionless on the cream carpet, gray and rosy brains leaking from a cleft in his head.

_'Tis a relief when the dead remain dead and don't rise to feed on the living,_ Dafydd thought, his gaze flitting to the dais. The platform was a mess of grease and blood, shattered stones and chunks of flesh. Whatever spells had Morrigan and Jowan used, they had felled the two guards who had never made it past the slippery grounds. Bann Teagan was swaying there on quivering legs, looking around uncertainly.

“Are you well, Uncle?” Cailan asked, but didn't sheathe his sword just yet.

Bann Teagan grunted and rubbed his shoulder. “Marginally better than in an ogre's fist,” he answered. “Shit, this is shit!” he groaned in disgust when his eyes fell to his free hand. Thus it was confirmed beyond a doubt that the demon had lost its hold over him.

Dafydd recalled the flames from all three swords. They returned gladly to him, as tired as he felt inside. It was when Arlessa Isolde emerged from the door behind the dais. Her pearly-pink satins unsullied, her hair gathered in a perfect knot at the back of her head, she was an odd sight in the gore-splattered hall. Daintily picking her way through the carnage, she swore, “I would never have forgiven myself, had you died.”

Bann Teagan had nothing to say to that. His soiled hands seemed to interest him more than the woman as he attempted to wipe the dirt at least against his velvet breeches. It did nothing good either for his palms or the fabric.

Cailan raised the visor of his helm. “You have led him into dire danger, Lady Isolde,” he accused her in his kingly voice. “And I am most displeased.”

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “I... couldn't let... _anyone_ hurt Connor.”

Dafydd saw the tightness around her mouth, the cast of grim determination in her face. Purple circles under her bloodshot eyes bespoke that she didn't sleep much or well. Tear stains still marked her red-blotched cheeks. But no amount of nightmares and grief would ever make her give up her child. She didn't see the demon in the body that had used to be Connor's. She still saw her little boy, and all the dead around couldn't change her mind. His hand itched with an urge to slap her face. Perhaps it would wake her up. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare too. The muscles in his neck tensed to the point of pain as a wave of despair washed over him. How was he supposed to save a stupid child that had made a pact with a demon? How was he supposed to accomplish the impossible to receive at least a sliver of mercy for Jowan?

“Your son has become an abomination,” Jowan spoke the truth in a voice devoid of all feelings.

“You did this to him!” Isolde screamed like a cat. “None of this would have happened without you!” She shook, her fingers curling like talons.

Dafydd blocked her way down from the dais. She wouldn't slip past him to hurt Jowan more than she already had. She stared at him from above with huge, half-mad eyes, and it seemed that she would try to skirt around him. A dark growl of warning rose through his throat. Baring his teeth, he let it out.

Bann Teagan shook his head. “It was your own folly that brought him here, Isolde.” Three deep furrows appeared above his nose as he scowled at her. A man in his late thirties, he looked a decade older now, on account of the recent ordeal. His vigor had been drained by the spell, and it would take time to regain it. There was a web of red in his blue eyes as tiny blood vessels protested against all strain. His skin had temporarily lost its tautness, and even the flesh beneath had sagged. A period of rest would reverse the changes, but for now his brown hair and beard framed a ruined, exhausted face.

Emotions twisted Cailan's mouth. He cast a quick glance at Dafydd and the short flight of stairs that he was blocking. He made no move in that direction though and instead leaped up onto the dais, easily – despite the weight of his armor. There he reached for his favorite uncle and gently squeezed his arm to steady him. But his eyes were on Arlessa Isolde when he said, “The demon must be destroyed.”

She swayed under the weight of his stare, under the implications of his words. “Surely, you do not mean to kill your cousin,” she wailed, her Orlesian accent made thicker by distress.

“There is another way,” Jowan put in, stepping forth. Everyone's attention turned to him. He suffered the gazes calmly, his posture loose, his stance unmoving. The life force of the slain guard had invigorated him. There was a smoothness to his features now, a glow to his complexion. But his face appeared expressionless, as if he had lost interest in the living world.

“Explain yourself,” Cailan bid him curtly, without letting go of his uncle's arm.

“The demon controls him from the Fade.” Jowan met the king's look. “We can use their bond to find its lair. Through a ritual of blood, I can enable a mage to enter the Fade and slay the demon there. Connor will come to no harm.”

“Enable?” Cailan echoed with suspicion. “Why not go yourself?”

“The ritual requires life force,” Jowan admitted without a flinch. “All of it, in a sacrifice.”

For a moment, Cailan gaped at him, speechless. “Someone must die?” he rasped then, the question odd considering how many lives had already been lost in this affair.

“As it happens, I will die either way, Your Majesty,” Jowan answered, his words and tone an amalgam of rue and wryness. “Before my death, I want to make up for the wrong I did. I can use my own life force to power the ritual.”

_No, you don't have to do this,_ Dafydd wanted to say, but not a sound passed his lips. A coldness hit his core without warning. It hurt as though a snowball struck him there; a particularly hard one – dipped in water and iced over. The flames of his power had not melted it in time. His mana pool had become a puddle, drained by the many fights of the night past and this day. The coldness spread, and the world was reaching him in distant, hazed images. He watched his companions, for he could not look at Jowan right now.

Alistair threw his hands up. “Oh, let's just mix and shake all the _wrongs_ in the world and hope that somehow we make _rights_ out of them.”

“If he is willing, it does sound like a sensible choice,” Morrigan mused, her eyes focused and alert as every time she chanced upon a new secret of magic. Her mouth opened a breath, perhaps in curiosity and hunger to learn more about this ritual.

“You can't be serious! It's blood magic we speak about!” Alistair protested. Peering at her from under his eyebrows knotted with apparent frustration, he waited for some reaction. Not being granted any, his jaw dropped. “Wait, you are being serious.”

“A bright lad.” Morrigan cocked a brow at him. “I hold high hopes for you yet.”

Dafydd watched their exchange, and knew: To her, the ritual presented an opportunity to expand her knowledge. To Alistair, it was an unholy, depraved practice against which he protested on principle; his Chantry upbringing was rearing its head and wouldn't be appeased. But to Dafydd, it was an act which would claim the life of his friend. Neither Morrigan nor Alistair seemed to pay any mind to that. He turned away from them, and laid a heavy hand on Jowan's shoulder. “Jowan, are you certain?” he forced out, through the pain in the back of his throat.

For a mere heartbeat, Jowan leaned into the touch. Then a melancholy smilet broke the expressionless mask on his face. “To end my life saving another?” he asked softly. His dark eyes looked bottomless when he answered his own question, “It is better than to be boiled alive. And, I don't want Lily to be ashamed of me, should she ever learn...”

He had the truth of it, and had already accepted that he would die. Dafydd couldn't deny him the choice to end it all here, as a free man, on his own terms. He nodded because he couldn't shake his head, despite his fear of the Beyond. It was a dreadful, hostile place, the Beyond. But he would enter it and slay the demon there, so Jowan would not be submitted to a heartless punishment.

“So be it. Let us proceed, then,” Cailan said, somewhere far away.

The heap of dead elves to the left, the remains of bewitched guards to the right, Jowan fell to his knees. To sacrifice his life. He knelt in the strewn viscera, on a layer of gore. And there was nothing to be done for it; they didn't have time to find a place that would afford him more dignity in his last moments.

Every muscle in his body clenched, Dafydd watched a spiral of light rise from the ground and engulf his friend in a field bright and soft at the same time. Sparks of magic fluttered through the shaft of light like snowflakes. They were descending around Jowan, yet never touching him. And it was a sad sight, for the man could use a caress of something light and cool in his hair. He knelt there with his hands clasped, head bowed in extreme focus on the ritual. Without warning, an invisible power lifted him high above the floor. Jowan arched back, his spine almost snapping in the unnatural angle. A shrill scream tore out of him as a ruby geyser burst out of his chest.

Warm droplets of his blood sprayed Dafydd's face. He felt them touch his skin, like a sudden spring shower. Only red. A wave of dizziness swallowed him whole. His vision was reddening, the violent color spreading fast from the edges. He blinked, but it would not go away. His ears rang with the echo of his friend's scream. It was still trapped there. So loud, so loud, so loud. Everything turned red. There had never been so much blood. Through its swirling whorls, he saw Jowan falling. And felt himself falling too. It was an unstoppable fall that would not turn into flight.

*

“Is that you, Connor?” someone called out in a desperate voice of a seeker who fails to find. “Connor, I'm coming.”

The ground felt uncomfortably hard and cold under his back, but Dafydd didn't want to move. He didn't want to even open his eyes. For, the sight wouldn't be to his liking. The air he breathed told him that. It felt all wrong: too dry, too thin, full of a metallic tang of lyrium. It felt like getting a noseful of raw lyrium dust with every inhale. It tingled in his nose, sucking all moisture off the sensitive tissue. Were he in the living world, he would have already started to bleed, the blood vessels in his nostrils corroded in contact with the deadly metal. But this was the Beyond, the domain of demons and spirits. And he didn't bleed, yet.

A pained grunt on his lips, he opened his eyes. There was no sky above him, only a thick, impenetrable fog, shimmering in blue. And he knew it _was_ the lyrium dust that made it thus. His stomach rolled. Pressing a fist against his belly, he sat up. It would do him no good to retch while lying on his back.

A small voice sounded from afar, “Father! Where are you, Father?” It was Connor's voice, and it wasn't. The otherworldly corruption in its timbre couldn't be denied, though it sounded softer here than in the living world. The demon still played its games, hidden somewhere in the smothering fog.

Dafydd rose to his feet. His knees shook. His hands trembled, even if he kept one fist tight against his belly, the other clenched around the grip of his sword. At least, he had the sword this time. At least it was not a ploughing staff. But dread squeezed his heart all the same, making its beat sluggish as it struggled against the cruel vice. This was a Harrowing, all over again. Only this time, there were Cailan and Alistair and Morrigan instead of the templars. It didn't make much difference. If he failed to defeat the demon, if the creature possessed him, they would kill his body in the living world just as the templars in the Circle would have.

“I want to go home,” the demon wailed from the fog.

A guttural growl leaked out of Dafydd's mouth. He wanted to go home, too. On heavy feet, he dragged himself deeper into the Beyond. If he was to ever leave this dreadful place, he had to find and kill the demon first.

“I am cold, Father,” the creature complained, its voice so deceptively helpless, its words deceivingly innocent.

The lies were coming from every direction. As Dafydd's smarting eyes grew accustomed to the fog, he began to catch glimpses of glowing shadows, wandering aimlessly all around him. Some looked like Connor, and some like a man old, one of a solemn demeanor.

“Have you seen my son?” a shadow of that man asked him. “He is here. I can hear him.” His features stayed blurry, shifting as he spoke, but his voice sounded decidedly human. It lacked the eerie ring. The ghastly echo. So, this was Arl Eamon, or at least an aspect of him, a misplaced shard of his soul.

“This is the Beyond. All you hear are lies of a demon. Your son isn't here,” Dafydd told him. His usually smooth tenor sounded raw and foreign to his own ears. It wasn't the same rawness it acquired when he called upon his fires. When he summoned his fiery power, his voice reflected its quality. Impressive, stark... raw in the most bewitching way. But this was a wounded and sore hoarseness, as his throat protested against the unnatural air passing through his windpipe.

“No, I can't believe you this.” The shadow pressed his hands to his ears. “You are trying to mislead me. Begone!”

For a moment, Dafydd thought he would have to fight this shard of Arl Eamon's soul, but then the demon sobbed somewhere close, “Father, I only want to help you.”

“Connor!” The shadow of Arl Eamon snapped his head toward the sobs. “Connor, where are you? I'm coming!” And he was, wandering off into the demon's traps.

Dafydd ignored the man's shadows afterward. He couldn't help them. They would not listen. He trudged on with stubborn determination, following Connor's trail. The boy's shadows ran and hid, disappeared only to reappear and run again, all the time leading Arl Eamon's soul on a merry chase.

Mud cracks beneath his feet crumbled as he walked. Everything was so parched, about to turn to dust. And he would turn to dust as well, unless he found the wicked demon soon. The path was framed with stone structures. Some looked smooth, some rugged, some like gigantic tentacles of a petrified sea monster. They all emerged from the cold fog just for a moment, only to vanish with the next heartbeat. He shivered. His inner fires had turned into embers; they had tired, like him. Still, like the embers of a camp fire, they possessed the power to warm him. It was his fear that breathed cold puffs onto the nape of his neck and whose chilly fingers ghosted up and down his spine. It was the dread that made him shake. Wary of the surroundings, he kept himself to the middle of the road; there was no telling when any of the stones would crack and fall.

He knew not how long he had been walking when the narrow path spat him into a large circle marked with standing stones.

The demon stood within, still concealed beneath Connor's likeness. But this version of Connor, unlike the rest, appeared physical in its nature. The creature didn't see him come. It was standing with its back turned to him, gazing somewhere far. Though, perhaps that too was just one of its games.

Whether or not the suspicion be proved true, the time to face the demon had come. Dafydd's limbs stopped quivering; courage returned to him because it had to. The Beyond scared him, but a man could not always choose the field where to make his stand. For him, this was the place, this was the time. Quietly he drew his sword and spun it in his hand, whispering, “Creag armachd.” His magic obeyed, flowing through him, hardening his skin. He felt the change. There was a new tightness to his skin now, rock-hard but supple. It didn't rob him of his litheness, but granted his flesh a protection that woolens and leathers never could.

His heartbeat quickened as he advanced against the demon on the lightest feet. A moment of surprise could win him the battle. He was still too far from its target, when the demon turned to face him. Slowly, almost lazily, as if it always knew of his presence and merely gave him time to ready himself.

“Who are you?” It pointed a finger at him. “Have you made Father ill?”

It still kept playing the game Dafydd had no intention to join. It was not attacking though, and he needed to come within reach. His eyes never leaving the boy's body, he answered, “I have not made Arl Eamon sick, as you well know.”

“Do I?” The creature folded its arms on its chest. “You could lie to me. You could be a demon.”

“You are,” Dafydd returned. He held his sword in the high guard, watching for a chance to lunge at the demon, but was still too far to strike it. With the little mana that he had yet, he would have to rely more on iron than on his magic.

“Ah, must you spoil my game?” the demon complained.

Dafydd never answered that question. An explosion of bright light blinded him. He heard Connor scream in the voice of a tormented human boy. And when he saw again, the lad trembled in a sinister, brilliant cloud, his limbs stretched like on an invisible rack. Another being, much larger than him, was tearing through his body, shifting it, molding it, using it to form its own shape. No blood was spilling. This was a working of an evil and powerful magic. Shrieking, Connor fell to his hands and knees. And then there was no boy anymore, only the demon. It sprang to its feet.

Dafydd paused, taking the sight in, sizing up his foe. The demon had assumed the likeness of a horned female. A purple halo hovered between its impressive horns, limning a soft, womanly face. Its slender body, clad just in jewels, undulated in a manner that a man whose desires were after women would have found seductive. Dafydd was not such a man.

“Very well, no more illusions,” the demon allowed, its voice as soft as its face. “You see me in my true form, and you are trapped in my realm. You are trespassing here, mortal. Yet, I hold no desire to engage you in a fight. Nor should you be eager to engage me.”

To kill it or become possessed were the only two ways to leave the Beyond. Dafydd was not going for the latter. “I cannot think of a single reason why I should not end you.”

“You would slay Desire? What would the living world be like without me? Dull, and bleak, let me tell you.” The demon licked its lips, looking at him like a cat might look at a songbird. There was a hunger, a burning want in its dark eyes. In the eyes that showed no white around the gleaming irises.

Dafydd knew what the demon saw in him. Back in the Circle, Anders had told him many times that his sharp-chiseled beauty shone brighter than the sun. Odd, that he thought of it now, the memories so vivid as if he was reliving the moments. The drab dormitory in the apprentice quarters flashed before his inner eye. He felt the hard mattress of the narrow cot beneath his back, he saw Anders' dreamy face leaning to his, he experienced the heaviness of afterglow. Running his soft hands over Dafydd's unblemished skin, adoring long and sculpted and graceful muscles, Anders was telling him that he surely had been made in the very image of elven gods. The memory blurred into another. Anders was spearing his fingers in the thick, unbound flood of Dafydd's hair, professing that its color reminded him of fresh chestnuts. They were hiding in a dark nook of the Circle's chantry. Just before the mandatory morning prayers, they had a heartbeat of pleasure to steal from under the noses of the templars and the Chantry sisters. Their mouths met in a ravenous kiss. Lips and teeth and tongues and heat. Need. The scent of elfroot and thyme, Anders' scent, burning in his fires. Resin and flames, spices and herbs. A passionate moment in an unholy place. A shy, gentle touch of healing magic afterward, so no one would see the marks of kissing on their mouths. Anders' thumb running over Dafydd's lips. A whispered praise for their satiny softness. And then the chantry vanished. They were standing by a hopelessly small window now, longing for the free world beyond the thick walls of the tower. The sunset glow had turned Lake Calenhad into molten gold. They couldn't hear its whispers. But they could smell the freshness of its waters, the mud and decay oozing from its rushes, even the wafts of fish odor from the drying racks near The Spoiled Princess inn. They could smell it all, yet have none of it. It was a melancholy moment before Anders looked into his eyes, smiled, and spoke of moldavites, the precious dark-green stones fallen from the skies. And then he whispered against his lips that Dafydd must have fallen from the skies too, for never before had such perfection walked the earth.

And then, the images were gone. Just like Anders had been gone from the Circle Tower until the templars had dragged him back. His daring escapes had never ended well.

Making deals with demons never ended well either. Suddenly, Dafydd was most certain that this demon had invoked the recollections in his mind on purpose. It pained him to tear himself away from the only good memories he held about his time in the Circle. What he had shared with Anders, it hadn't been love. They, like every other mage imprisoned in the Circle Tower, knew: _Love is too dangerous here, love here always ends in painful partings, love here is a sword the templars will use against us, love here, in the Circle, is an impossible dream, an emotion never to be felt._ Friendship and carnal pleasure, those they had allowed themselves to feel and have. And even those hurt inside his chest now, and he could barely breathe. The sword was becoming oddly heavy in his hand as he held it high.

“Whatever need you have, I can sate,” the demon purred.

A wistful melody filled Dafydd's ears. Elven lutes and flutes played it only for him. He knew it, the song he had last heard as a child. A soft voice sang him the gentlest lullaby, the sweetest promise. Of the return home it sang. Of hope and longing. Of sun and moonlight, of joys and sorrows, of love and laughter. It sang of the journey home. But above all, it sang about freedom, though it never spoke the word. And as it sang, new images flooded his mind. He saw sun-kissed meadows, and he saw paths winding through gentle knolls. He saw deep emerald forests, and he saw dark blue mountains. He saw the azure of the skies, and he saw the gentle puffs of cream clouds. He saw castles built of white stone, graced with tall, slender spires. Their masonry was like a snowflake, light and perfect. This was Halamshiral of old, the end of the journey. And his heart was bursting with the need to go there, and the pained knowing that he could not, for he was still a prisoner. Unchained but bound all the same, sentenced to end his life in the Deep Roads where the sun did not shine, the clouds did not travel across the skies, and no one spread apple blossoms for the departed.

“You hunger for freedom, mortal,” the demon whispered, gliding closer to him. “I can smell your need burning. I can remove all pain of bondage. I can set you free. If only you let me.”

He shook his head. The demon had no real power to slake his thirst for freedom. It only saw it in his mind, and it would corrupt and twist it to its own purpose. He already carried the Taint in his veins, and had no need for another source of corruption to plague his thoughts. “I will win my freedom for myself,” he said, blinking away a tear. “I have no need of your aid, demon.”

The creature tilted its head to a side, regarding him with an expression of regrets. “If friends we cannot be, foes we must become. Alas. I would have given you anything, you know?”

“You would have taken everything,” he scoffed.

“Eventually,” the demon conceded with a small nod. “I know no other way. 'Tis a shame you bring the game to such an untimely end. But, have the battle you so foolishly seek. And die, for no one can conquer **DESIRE**.”

The word boomed like a thunder, and the blast of air that came out of the demon's mouth hurled Dafydd back. A standing stone ended his involuntary flight. The impact rattled his bones. Bones that surely would have cracked, had he not been protected by the rock armor. The taste of blood filled his mouth; he had bitten his own tongue. Winded, he attempted to pull a breath, but his lungs and midriff refused to work. The hollow pain threatened to double him over.

The demon was gliding toward him, swift and ominous. Dafydd quickly swept his own frame with a gesture of his free hand, merely thinking the word of power. He had no breath to speak it. But his magic heard him all the same, and the protective embrace of an arcane shield wrapped around him in time to deflect a bolt of lightning that the demon cast at him.

The air crackled, charged and shimmering, full of ozone and lyrium dust. The purple halo between the demon's horns became a riot of lightning bolts. They were gathering, into a mother-bolt.

Dafydd's hair stood on its end, warning him of a great danger. He bounced away from the standing stone. Raising the sword high, he came for the demon. He led the blade down in a cleaving cut aimed between the horns, but the creature displaced it with claws that unexpectedly sprang from its fingernails. Five long, razor sharp daggers those were, black and shiny like dragonglass. The bolts of lightning reflected in them almost blinded him.

He blinked, losing a beat. A cold vice caught his sword arm. The demon's touch chilled him to the marrow of his bones. He gasped. The agony returned his breath to him, little good as it did him when his wrist suffered in a crushing prison of the creature's armpit. And the sword was just a useless piece of iron now.

The claws were coming to rip his neck open.

He thought a word, raising his free hand to block them. Flesh against dragonglass. The flames came to his aid. Not in a ball. They were a stream of fire, unleashed at the demon's limb. The flames dashed forth, liquid and fast. Enraged, they engulfed the creature's claws, the hand, the wrist.

The demon shrieked in pain, and released him from the crushing hold. Its wounded arm faltered, and didn't land the final blow.

“Lochran!” Dafydd screamed the word from the top of his lungs, draining the remains of his power. His palm spewed the stream of flames, pumping it forth from the very center of his being. The reek of burnt drakestone clogged the air as the devouring fire consumed the demon's flesh. Dafydd saw the claws melting, dripping dark tears. Perhaps they were of dragonglass after all, and his fires were hotter than dragon flame. The creature reeled backward, its flesh raw, cracking and bleeding, then blackening like a cinder, clinging to the bones beneath until the fire ate it all and licked the scorched demonbone.

Mere few heartbeats of destruction it all lasted. And then there was no more power to draw from. The flames sputtered and died.

Exhaustion shook through Dafydd's limbs. The sword in his hand became so heavy that a temptation to drop it washed over him. In horror he watched new flesh grow around the burnt bones, new claws spring from reborn fingers.

_What can kill this?_

The demon was rushing him again, its face twisted in a grimace of undiluted fury. Its mouth gaped open, full of sharp fangs, ready to tear living flesh. It flung its wounded arm at him, from the above, in an angle that would drive its claws through his skull and neck. It wanted to rip his head off in that blow.

Pushing the vestiges of his litheness and strength into his muscles, he escaped the cut by stepping forth and trapping the creature's arm under his own. It was a game that two could play. The demon tried to recoil and wrench itself free. But Dafydd didn't let go. With all his might behind the thrust, he ran his sword through the demon's chest.

The body impaled on his iron grew limp. His strength had faded too much here; he couldn't yank the blade free. But he clung to it, for it was his only protection now that his magic was gone. The demon fell against him, so very heavy. Dafydd couldn't bear its weight and remain standing. In an imitation of an embrace, they both fell to their knees.

The cold ground didn't stop Dafydd's fall. He was sinking deeper, ever deeper, through a ruby vortex whose power he couldn't resist. It didn't matter. The demon was dead, slain by his hand. _The heart. Desire lives and dies in the heart,_ he thought, just before his eyes fluttered close.

*

**THE REDCLIFFE ROAD, THREE DAYS LATER**

 

The sound of the Redcliffe windmill going round echoed in the distance. Cheerfully rattling and clacking, it stayed unconcerned with mortal sorrows, oblivious to the ashes committed to Lake Calenhad. Jowan's remains had been burnt, along with the flesh and bones of all other victims of the demon, on a great funeral pyre. A boat had then taken their ashes on the last voyage. Not far, just off the shore of the lake. The flames carried on the heads of burning arrows had set the boat afire. When it had sunk, the quiet waters had embraced the ashes. Pulled under the surface, Jowan's remains had reached his wet grave. And peace. So Dafydd had been told; he had slept through the past three days and had not had a chance to say farewell.

Now he was wide awake and found the noise of the mill vexing. He remembered it as the last sound he had heard before opening the secret passage in its cellar, and it stirred raw recollections. Memories that he would have preferred not to have. He could not have left Redcliffe behind soon enough, and only the fact that he was on the road again soothed his troubled mind. His companions walked behind him, leaving him alone with his thoughts, and it was better thus.

In the past three days, someone had attended to him. The pain of contusions he had suffered in the Beyond had been eased with elfroot and knitbone salve, his wrist had been bandaged, his hair and face washed. Healing potions had been rubbed into his gums and under his tongue so his body could absorb their power even as he had lain unconscious. Someone had mended his gear, too. It hadn't smelled of death and burnt drakestone when he had woken up, and the tears in his gambeson had been patched up. But his innocence had been shredded, and he didn't think there was a needle and a thread in all of Thedas that could fix that.

The muddy path wound through sparse woods of spruces. Hazels and birches dotted the landscape, the white bark of the latter graceful against the backdrop of evergreen trees. There was a springtide sweetness to the air, a shy promise of warmer days soon to arrive. Catkins graced the twigs of birches, and bees buzzed around the clusters sluggishly, weak yet after the long sleep of winter. He supposed that he should be glad to see so much life near the village that had nearly been lost to the undead and their master. Connor had survived his own foolishness and Arl Eamon's condition hadn't worsened. All hope for the man's eventual recovery hadn't been lost yet as Bann Teagan had said. They _only_ needed to find the Urn of Andraste. Her sacred ashes would deliver the arl from his sickness, or so everyone seemed to believe.

Chewing on a clove, Dafydd admitted to himself that he didn't care whether they would find the urn or not. He had withdrawn inside, and there the fate of Arl Eamon didn't matter. Few things had a meaning there as he found, most just lacked both importance and urgency. He walked because he could not stand still. But where he walked and why, that did not concern his mind.

A murder of black birds launched to flight from the roof of a hunting lodge ahead. Their hoarse cawing jarred him out of his thoughts and made his mind leave his numbed core. With a start he realized that he had not heard the clacking of the windmill for a time, and didn't even know where he was.

Glancing around, he spied standards of House Guerrin rearing near the road, the flags drooping in the calm. Granite rocks framed the path, a change for the better compared to red sandstone. If he remembered it well, this place lay somewhere between the second and the third gatehouse that guarded the land between Redcliffe and the Crossroads. And only the first gatehouse was still manned; Arl Eamon had lost most of his men-at-arms to the undead.

_I must stay more alert, lest we soon be dead,_ he thought. Fumbling in a pouch for a new clove to put in his mouth, he heard Alistair's steps speed up through the mud. He quickened his pace too, to escape an unwelcome conversation. But Alistair was not one to give up on his intentions easily. Loud squelches confirmed that the man lengthened his gait, and sooner than Dafydd would have wished, his stubborn companion caught up with him. He cast him a sidelong baleful glance, hoping to discourage all talk.

“Are you well?” Alistair asked, his hazel eyes full of concern.

Concern that should have been shown in the dungeons or in the great hall. There it would have mattered. “No,” Dafydd answered curtly, shaking his head.

“Can we–”

“I have been Harrowed for the second time,” Dafydd said, staring ahead, putting one foot before the other, one step after another. But the festered wound in him burst open, and the pus spilled out: “My friend lies dead. The lad responsible for the death of my people in the castle is well and alive, for I have saved him. His mother who has covered the felonies committed while he was possessed shall not be punished for her deeds. How ironic that she had Jowan tortured for his. No, I am decidedly not well. A taste of blood and ash and bile lingers in my mouth, and I'm weary of it. Weary of this world.” His breath came in short pants, and he couldn't tell whether he found more pain or relief in the sudden release.

“I understand,” Alistair sighed, trying to touch his arm.

Dafydd recoiled from the contact. “I do not think you do.”

Behind them, Morrigan said in a clear voice, “You owe him a debt of blood, Cailan.”

Cailan huffed.

Dafydd set his eyes on the road. There was a wide uneven dip in its surface, and spring showers had filled it with water to the brim. The greenery pressed too close to the edges of the vast puddle; it could not be skirted unless one fancied a close encounter with wild rose bushes and their thorns. A few slabs of stone wallowed in the dip though, apparently to let peasants cross it with dry feet. Picking his way across, hopping from stone to stone, Dafydd hoped to be left alone.

It was not meant to be.

“Dafydd...” Alistair started again no later than they reached the other side. “You may not want to hear it, but I thank you for Connor's life. He is but a child, a loving son. _He_ was not responsible for all those deaths. He was a victim of the demon, like the others. You have saved him though it would have been easier not to.”

_You know nothing. Nothing of the Harrowing. Nothing of the Beyond. Had the demon captured me as it planned, had it turned me into an abomination, you, Cailan, or Morrigan would have slain me. But your precious Connor would have lived,_ Dafydd thought, and, tired of misplaced expressions of gratitude that made him sick, he spoke the rawest truth, “I did it, so Jowan would not be boiled alive.”

It silenced everyone. Only a lark sang in the skies, blissfully innocent of understanding the struggles of men. Dafydd set a truly punishing pace. The others could match it or stay behind, as they pleased. He had a hankering to march away from everything.

“The king cannot always do as the man in him wishes,” Cailan panted behind him after a long while, getting breathless under the weight of the armor he carried. “And I... recognize my debt.”

Dafydd pressed his lips together. A vice held his chest, and wouldn't let go. It was taking his breath away, not on account of physical exertion. The taste of blood and ash and bile he had spoken of... it didn't linger on his tongue. His mouth was full of the spiciness of cloves. But his mind... his mind was full of blood and ash and bile, and he didn't know how to flush the horrible concoction out. _The king cannot always do as he pleases, indeed,_ he reflected. The thought failed to gentle his turmoil. In truth, it made all feelings roil faster, in maddening circles. “I have no dispute with Cailan, the man,” he replied at last, after another stretch of silence. But, even as he spoke to him, he kept marching on, never looking back. He couldn't even glance at Cailan. Not yet, not while the memories were too raw to touch. Cailan the man had felt the natural urge to protect his kin, he could understand that. Conditions for a mercy to be granted... he had begrudgingly accepted that it had been within Cailan's right to set them. But Cailan the king had disregarded _his_ earlier help and had not intended to spare the life of _his_ friend, no matter the result of the rescue attempt. And had Dafydd failed, Cailan the king would not have hesitated to make an example out of Jowan, in the name of justice and law that ignored a long string of injustices which had led the man to his doom. Yet, the woman who had protected a demon at the costs of many lives would not face the king's high justice. She would live her life as if she had done no wrong. Dafydd didn't know whether he could ever forgive that. Forget, he couldn't. “When the time comes,” he said, “I will collect the debt from His Majesty, the King.”

 


	2. A Broken Field of Ruby Blood

**WILDERVALE, THE FREE MARCHES**

**THE 7 th DAY OF THE MONTH OF SOLACE, 9:30 DRAGON AGE**

 

The moon, All-Mother's creation placed in the sky to soothe the land at night, kept its quiet vigil patiently, its melancholy eye gazing down at the living world. At dawn, the sun would return and kiss the land good morning. At dawn, the eternal lovers would reunite. But for now the land slept, as did most of her many children. Only harvest flies sang in the trees, their chirping and clicking soft and sweet.

Despite the soporific tune, Yaevinn Lavellan jerked awake in his bed. The music of the night engulfed him, wanting to lull him back to dreams, but his stormy gray-blue eyes stayed wide open as he stared at a glimmering pool of moonshine spilled over the oaken floor. Judging from its position, he had fallen asleep mere three hours ago. What had disturbed his rest, he didn't know.

His alert gaze flitted over the space of his aravel. Twenty feet long and eight feet wide, the place provided no nooks where an enemy could hide. Furnishings orderly framed the walls, and no one could squeeze in the gaps between them. Even his sleeping-place, constructed after the fashion of a berth on boat, was enclosed by walls from three sides, the only access route leading through the center of the aravel. He kept it free of any clutter. The only intruder allowed in the central space was the mast, a structure necessary to support sails that made an aravel what it was, a landship in essence. Quicklings weren't wrong to call it thus.

The spar rose from a solid timber beam running along the center of the aravel from the fore to the aft, and passed through the ceiling to the main deck above. Painted stormy gray-blue like the walls, varnished to lend the surface a satiny luster, adorned with broad borders of an apple twig motif worked in leaf silver, the mast still remained a mast – refusing to look like a mere decorative column – and it gave Yaevinn's quarters a distinct feel of a cabin on the lower deck.

Now moonlight graced the half closer to the only window. Shadows would have usurped the other half if it weren't for a dim scarlet glow that fought them, the tide of their subtle battle uncertain. A human's eye would have been confused. But he saw every detail just as clearly as by daylight, and knew the source of the undulating shine.

On an ornate ironwood stand in the corner, under a bell glass that kept all dust away, a large sunstone hovered in the air. Cut in the shape of a teardrop and polished into high sheen, it seemed to be made of shimmering ripples of red light. It was a message crystal, connected by the power of ancient magic to its twin in the possession of Yaevinn's brother Insengrim as well as to its twenty-nine moonstone cousins, of which each clan Keeper held one. The sun and the moon saw and heard everything that happened in the living world. The magic imbued in the stones born from their eternal bodies bestowed some of the gift even on mortals. Users of the message crystals could converse with one another as if they sat in the same room, regardless miles that stretched between them. But Yaevinn's stone was calm now. It didn't hum and its light didn't brighten. The connections lay dormant. Nobody was reaching out to him. Whatever disturbance had stirred him out of sleep, it didn't have its origins within his aravel.

His muscles tensed as he strained his ears to catch any rustle outside that would warn him of danger prowling the encampment, but he heard no such sounds. No slither of ringmail, no clinks of steel, no footfalls that he wouldn't recognize. The camp offered only familiar noises. His people were asleep, breathing and sighing from their dreams. Someone restlessly tossed and turned. Someone moaned. Someone snored, struggling for breath. And someone broke wind, undignified as the rumble was. When the mind rested, the flesh cared naught about manners.

Like any other elf, he had learned to ignore such bodily sounds lest his sensitive hearing become a curse rather than a blessing. But now he paid them attention as he searched for the elusive intrusion that had broken his dreams. He found nothing.

A voice of reason told him that there simply had been no cause. A sense of inner unrest claimed otherwise. He rolled onto his back. Satin bed sheets caressed and cooled his skin, their touch smooth and sensual. But it lacked the power to soothe him. Gritting his teeth, he watched moonbeams coming through the window. If he raised his arm, he could touch its pane. But he couldn't see the world through it; it wasn't transparent. Made of silk hardened with beeswax, rock crystal dust and a touch of elven magic, it let light in, but hid the night from his sight.

And perhaps it was better thus. The world without was cold and harsh to his people – to the Dalish, the last of the Elvhenan. It occurred to him that he should close his eyes and dream of their lost glory and kingdoms just a little longer, just until it was his turn to take over the night watch and keep them safe while they slept. But he was Mirthadra'mi, The Honored Blade of the People, one of their two High Kings. His long watch had started the day he had received the mark of his sacred duty. The blood writing on the side of his neck – a mark fashioned in the form of Solium, Elgar'nan's constellation in the sky – had summoned him to his lifework. Like Elgar'nan, All-Father Himself, he wielded lightning, harnessing its power to strike the enemies of the People and burn them down to ash. As his calling compelled him, he stood against those who meant the People harm, and his watch would end only when he entered the endless dream. Then he would rest in apple orchards abloom.

He rose. Despite all the sensual scarlet satin sheets, his bed felt like an abandoned nest, cold and empty. There wasn't a pair of sleepy arms that would close around him and convince him to stay.

Self-assured in his nakedness, he walked over to an ironwood chest placed between two armor dummies. His gear occupied only one of them, and he avoided looking at the other.

Setting his eyes on a dragonglass washing set that stood on the chest, he reached for the pitcher and poured some fresh water in the bowl. The breath of the night felt hot and heavy, and he could use the touch of a wet, cool sea sponge on his face and body. Standing on the verge between the red glow and the play of moonlight in shadows, he began washing himself. His every move – controlled, yet flowing – marked him for a gifted warrior. His was the power and well-muscled grace of a mountain lion. Like the beast, he carried himself with a predatory pride. Unlike the beast, he did not seek solitude, although he lived alone – even amidst his kin. Whether the aloneness would end one day remained uncertain.

There had been arrangements made... Osred Mahariel of Clan Sabrae had been supposed to join Clan Lavellan at the next Arlathvenn, the gathering of all the Dalish. The young hunter had agreed to become Yaevinn's companion and in time perhaps more. But it would never come to pass, for Osred had lost his life to the Taint.

“It was a stroke of misfortune,” Marethari Talas, the Keeper of Clan Sabrae had claimed. “An accident caused by an ill-fated decision of young minds to prospect ancient ruins for traces of our past.”

Yaevinn remembered those words now and anger tingled just beneath his skin, the sensation bordering on pain. For it was the lightning storm of his power that cracked and sparkled there, craving to be unleashed. _Too easy it is to blame an ill chance for lives lost,_ he thought, tilting his head back, squeezing the sponge over his face. Trickles of water hit his skin, then rushed into the the thick flood of his raven hair, but he barely felt their touch. _Dafydd and Osred and Tamlen. Missing and dead and missing,_ he recalled the names, the faces, the fates. In them, Clan Sabrae had lost three promising young men. All in the course of mere six years. All to the lack of prudence on their Keeper's part. Why had a thirteen year old boy, a child still, been allowed to leave the camp compound alone? Why had young hunters not been accompanied by men of greater experience? Youth lacked caution. It was its privilege. And it was the duty of the Keeper to exercise good judgment in guiding the clan's younglings so their impetuousness wouldn't summon their death. Marethari had failed in her greatest task more than once.

And yet, her title couldn't lawfully be revoked, and a new Keeper could not be made, for she had not committed high treason. Such a tangle would not be unraveled easily, and he didn't envy Isengrim the burdens he carried as Ior'atish'an, The Peace Lord of the People. Like Mythal, All-Mother Herself, High King Isengrim had to uphold justice. In this case, justice of the Dalish law granted to Marethari meant a great injustice done to her clan.

It was a raw, inescapable thought. And perhaps the true cause of his inner unrest. Jarred by the realization, Yaevinn dropped the sponge in the basin, and stared in the mirror mounted on the wall. Limned by the scarlet glow from a side, the droplets of water on his beardless face looked like bloody tears. He watched them roll down to his clenched jaw, the sight oddly fascinating. Half veiled in shadows silvered by moonlight, half lit by the red shine, there was a stranger in the mirror, a young man who had not seen thirty winters yet. So said his taut and unblemished skin. Not a single silver thread marred the shine of the shoulder-length raven hair that framed his angular face carved in the very image of elven chiseled beauty. In the very image of fierce youth. But it was just an illusion. The man looked at him with gray-blue eyes that had seen storms of two hundred and thirty-seven years come and go. _This is me._ _An amalgam of storms and blood rains, is all that remains of me now,_ Yaevinn thought, his gaze never leaving his own face in the mirror. He was an old soul in a body that retained its youthful appearance in spite of the passage of time. But eleven score years and seventeen had marked him all the same. Stormy, blood-bathed events he had witnessed or brought about had removed soft touches from his features.

He tore his eyes away from the disconcerting reflection. If he could tear his mind away from equally disturbing thoughts, it would be for the best. His full lips twisted in a grimace. Perhaps it should have been a rueful smilet. But he had forgotten how to smile.

It had been almost a year since he had felt the corners of his mouth quirk up. Osred had teased that smile out of him with an expression of baffled infatuation in his dark eyes. It had been the second time they had spoken to one another, using message crystals to defy miles separating them. There had been yet another distance to cover, one against which all magic proved powerless, one which only the intimacy of shared experiences could close. Yaevinn had hoped that the dark-haired young hunter would eventually learn to see the whole of him, not just the dazzling High King part which inspired feelings closer to awe and worship than to love. To hold such hopes might have been a folly, but Yaevinn had held them all the same, for he was only a man, not a god. Few ever grasped this truth.

Osred had not been granted the time to come to such understanding; he had died, six moons past. There had never been more between them than the two short talks, but his death had left Yaevinn in a bewildering place of regrets for chances vanished before they had truly appeared. It was not a place of deep mourning, for grief feeds on memories of times spent together. There hadn't been any. Their story had been but a young apple twig, only just promising to bud and give birth to blooms and fruits. Death had snapped it off, and all that could have been remained unborn.

His neck corded at the thought, the tendons stood out. He swallowed hard and reached for the sponge once more. It was dripping water when he pressed it to his nape in an effort to alleviate some of the turmoil in his head. Trickles tickled his back, yet he almost didn't feel their teasing fingers run down along his spine. They were too... distant compared to sensations shooting through his flesh.

A fresh and sharp smell of a thunderstorm filled the aravel. It was his scent, made strong by gusts of anger blasting just beneath his skin. When he knew a moment of peace, his scent carried a hint of sweetness, a whiff or earthy tones and the aroma of young fir needles. Then the magic in him quieted and brought a feeling of rebirth and healing to everything it touched. But at its full dreadful power, when his wrath became one with a lightning storm, his magic bore only the sharp, biting smell of ozone. No sweetness, no rebirth, only a bright charge of ferocious destruction.

The feelings awoken by his thoughts had the strength of a gale now, not of a full blown storm. He would do best to gentle them, for there was nowhere to direct their outburst, so much he knew, and worked toward the desirable end with gritted teeth. _She is not an enemy,_ he reminded himself. _Merely an old woman, unequal to her tasks. What harm can she do in Planasene Forest? None. Even a child could lead a clan there and keep it safe. Isengrim has chosen the new place wisely for them._ Holding onto that belief, he felt his clenched jaws relax. The painful tingle under his skin subsided and its faint echo retreated to coil deep within.

The sponge bath went quickly afterward. The hour of his night watch was approaching, but if he made haste, he could yet speak to his brother before duty demanded his attention.

Done with refreshing his body, he nipped a leaf off a potted mint plant and chewed on it while slipping into a silver sea silk shirt. Touched by benevolent spirits of the Beyond, its fabric allowed him to expend less stamina with every move. A worthy aid in fight, that. And his hands were accordingly careful, almost reverent, with the smooth and light piece.

His smoke-gray breeches didn't require a quarter of such gentleness. Made of imbued tusket hide, they endured even rough handling well, as did his knee-high boots of the same material. Every item fit him snugly, having been made for him by the best Dalish artisans.

Over the shirt came a knee-length ringmail of ithirril. The alloy of mithril and starmetal had the appearance of tarnished silver. Its faded look fooled the eyes of quicklings. Else they would hunt for ithirril like they scoured for all precious things – ruthlessly, without mercy. Their kind knew no other way.

The metal whispered softly as it slithered in place to protect his body. He listened to the soothing sound, and his mind quietened. So deep did his satisfaction with secrets kept run. Before his inner eye, he saw the mail as it had come into his possession the day his uncle Fiolior had named him his First Hand. It had been neatly folded on a cushion of gold cloth, presented to him by his parents, along with an oblong rune covered with a glowing writ in the Elder Speech. Through the veils of time, his father's words reached for him, “ _'Tis mail is made of ithirril, the solidified blood of the sun joined to the love tears of the land, their alloy forged by the best smiths of Arlathan. Harder than any steel, lighter and more supple than snoufleur skin, it will keep and protect you. Keep and protect it in return. 'Tis your patrimony, guard it as closely as Durgen'len, Children of the Stone, once guarded pools of mithril, the love tears of the land. They had drained them ages before the first shem came, ages before the Durgen'len themselves committed their first Memories to the stone. No longer did they remember and thus the shem could not learn of mithril from them. But we remember, and we keep the secrets of the sun and the land from whose union All-Father was born. He has gifted you the power He Himself wields, I give you the protection of His parents. Wear it proudly, my son.”_ And Yaevinn had run his digits over the cool, smooth metal, feeling the history and glory of his people under his fingertips. His throat had closed, and all that he had been able to do was to meet his father's eyes, stormy like his own. They had been proud on him, and he had basked in that feeling even as his mother had spoken the words of caution, “ _Wear it proudly, my child, but should it ever be in danger of falling in the hands of the shem, ruin it.”_ The rune had lain in her elegant hand, its writ shimmering as she had continued, “ _This rune turns ithirril into billon, copper and silver joined together, a worthless alloy. Use its power, should all hope be gone. Use it then, for 'tis better to destroy your patrimony than surrender it to the hands of the shem.”_

His eyes fell on his broad swordbelt hung from a peg on the wall, right beside his bed. The rune had its own tooled leather casing attached to it, sealed and kept as safe as he kept the word of power that would activate it. The word sealed in a vault deep within his mind. It gave him comfort to think that should his strength fail to protect his patrimony, the rune and that single word would ensure that its secret wouldn't be revealed.

It was when a low hum reverberated against the glass bell. The scarlet glow brightened, engulfing the entirety of the aravel. The message crystal became the sun in small, ominously red like his orb in the dawn skies when he heralded a day of bloodshed. It was a rare color for the crystal to don while active. The inclusions of copper in its mass usually gave it the appearance of molten metal when its magic awoke.

Yaevinn's eyebrows knotted in grim anticipation. An omen had been given; the tidings wouldn't be glad. With a steady hand, he removed the glass bell, and didn't hesitate before he ran his fingers over the stone.

His touch opened a window to another corner of the living world. A diaphanous sphere appeared in the center of the aravel. Immaterial, yet impenetrable. The very air had thickened to give it a shape and its waves rippled slowly across the image within, blurring its edges. On the other side of the barrier, the night was afire and in its midst Marethari Talas swayed on her feet, her head hung low, her hands clutching her moonstone message crystal.

Torchlight undulated in the dark around her. She didn't seem to notice it as she stood there laved by the milky-blue glow of the moonstone. The pearly light sneaked through every tiny gap between her tight-clenched digits, framing each of them with a thin blue line. It looked as if a mad painter had applied a sure brush to outline their shape in a hue that didn't belong. The cold glow warred over her with warm, golden light of fire, and both mercilessly limned a ghastly sight. Her hands and arms were dark with flaking blood. Blood that had stiffened her snoufleur skin vambrace and soaked through the threads of volcanic gold embroidery. She didn't raise her head to meet Yaevinn's eyes.

“They are all dead,” she said in a shaky voice. “Our halla are dead.”

Breath went out of Yaevinn in a painful exhale as her image and words sunk in. “Where are you?” he asked, leashing his new-awoken anger so his voice wouldn't rumble like a thunder. The tingling charge coiled within him lashed out, reaching his skin in an instant. He saw the dark silhouettes of her people rush through the disorganized encampment, and the absence of trees around them wasn't lost on him. Only masses of black shale rock reared close to the torch flames. For reasons unknown, Clan Sabrae had left the haven of Planasene Forest where even a child could have kept them safe.

Marethari glanced up, her green eyes huge with shock. She resembled a deer caught in a sudden flash of firelight. A blood smear ran across her brow, mockingly hiding her golden blood writing from view. “The ancestors.” She heaved a breath, her chest rising abruptly before she nearly collapsed upon herself. Tugging her limbs to her core, she was gripping the crystal as if it was a lifeline. “They... came for us. When the night fell, they came. What has angered them so?” she asked in a small voice of a scared small girl who needed her world to make sense and her ancestors to sleep in peace. She was an old woman, living the fifth, last century of her life. Autumn had already turned to winter for her, and time had bleached vibrant color from her hair, leaving it with a whalebone tint that bespoke a human ancestor somewhere far in her bloodline. For better or worse, she had led her clan for forty-nine years now. She had ascended to her role as an elder, but the daze she was experiencing made a child of her.

Yaevinn didn't have the luxury to feel so stunned, or to stoke his anger over her foolish disregard for Isengrim's instructions. His muscles clenched around his jawline, in determination that pushed aside all other emotions. “You are at Sundermount,” he said, and it wasn't a question.

Once upon a time, there had been beautiful chambers carved into the rock of the mountain peak, so the ancestors would savor their endless dreams close to the sky, breathing the purest, crispest air that the Vimmark Mountains could provide. Then had come the Tevinters, the barbarian, short-lived shem hungry for conquest and gold and slaves. And Sundermount, the shrine of peace and silence and loving memories, had witnessed a terrible battle between the Tevinter Imperium and the Vhenrevasi, the last free elves of the Elvhenan realm fallen to the insatiable greed of quicklings. At the jagged peak of Sundermount, the Free People had taken their stand and had met the hated usurpers in the field. And perhaps they might have won the battle if not the war, had the Tevinters not unleashed an ancient, powerful demon. Audacity. The last arcane warriors of the Elvhenan had rallied and had given their lives to defeat the evil incarnate. Sacrificing themselves, they had bound Audacity. The bindings sealed by their life force had survived ages. The demon remained in its prison even now, eighteen centuries later. But the land of peaceful dreams had turned into the domain of night terrors, the sacred place of gentle partings into true burial grounds where ancestors no longer slept. For they were dead. And the dead didn't dream, though they could be roused. By demons. Perhaps not ones as mighty as Audacity, but demons all the same.

“We were only just setting camp when they fell upon us,” Marethari went on, clearly oblivious to anything but the images running inside her head. “Our halla saved us.” She began to rock on her feet. Slowly, back and forth, as she spoke in a dull, subdued voice, “They faced their fury, and died so we would not.”

“Marethari, speak to me,” Yaevinn commanded, in a steady, low-pitched tone. He was willing the words to reach her mind, and his heart beat like a hammer in the effort. “Your losses?”

“We fought,” she said, to herself, for she wasn't speaking to him. “But there were so many, so many angry spirits. I have never heard the halla scream so loud.”

Yaevinn's muscles twitched. His hands closed in fists. He couldn't leap through the barrier to land at Sundermount, to do what she should be doing. And she didn't listen. He tried again, with an emphasis on every word, “You. Must. Retreat. Now.”

Marethari tilted her head to a side. “They all lie dead, torn limb from limb,” she murmured. “I tried. I tried so hard to save them, but they died. And I saw them dying.” Her rich robe made of the Dales loden wool and snoufleur skin, reinforced by drake scales on the sides bore an overabundance of dark stains, and even her drakeskin gorget was smeared with blood. A testimony to her words. She must have waded amongst the perished and dying animals, trying in vain to heal them. Death couldn't be healed.

Precious as the halla were, brave and faithful companions of his race since the dawn of ages, Yaevinn's thoughts focused on the people of Clan Sabrae. And he wouldn't learn their fate from Marethari. His fingernails dug into his palms as frustration took hold of him. He would have shouted at her to come back to her senses, but it wouldn't help. And shake her, he couldn't.

It was when a fair-haired hunter clad in torn and stained red woolens joined her side. “Mirthadra'mi,” he said, bowing his head, touching his fist to his heart in a gesture of homage. His voice sounded gravelly on account of weariness, his golden hair was a wild tangle of sweat-soaked strands and unraveling braids, but his hands didn't tremble.

Yaevinn recognized his young face. He knew names and faces of all the hunters, of all Dalish clans. “Fenarel, sound the retreat,” he ordered, not wasting time with pleasantries. “To the Sundermount Approach. As far as you can without running into slavers.”

The youth raised his head. In the blue light, his eyes appeared dark like ivy in deep forests. “We are in the Approach already,” he said. “We have pulled back.”

A long breath of relief soothed the tingling tissue in Yaevinn's nostrils. Fenarel hadn't misplaced his wits. Young he was – mere twenty winters – and vain he might be, always prancing around in his bright red gear that made it hard to sneak up on his quarry unseen, but right now, he proved to be a far better keeper than his Keeper. “Good,” Yaevinn praised, letting the acknowledgment permeate his voice. It softened for the young man, reacquiring a timbre warm like a summer night.

And Fenarel grew taller under its influence, pushing his shoulders back as pride surged through him, washing away tiredness.

“Your losses?” Yaevinn repeated his earlier question, his eyes searching the youth's.

“Our halla,” Fenarel answered readily, maintaining the strong eye contact without fear. “We have a few wounded hunters, none gravely so. The demons went only after the halla, for some reason.” He shook his head, perhaps baffled with the fact now that he had voiced it. “We are stranded though. We could flee, but our winter supplies would be lost. Without our halla, we had to leave them behind, at the foot of Sundermount.”

Yaevinn's flesh tightened in readiness. He was the Honored Blade of the People, and couldn't fail in his watch over them. To lose winter supplies would mean hunger for Clan Sabrae once the coldest season unleashed gales that would prevent hunting for many days in a row and make sea fishing impossible for months. If Sylaise was merciful, the provisions could still be retrieved though. Demons had no use for food. “Clan Sabrae does not stand alone. We are coming to your aid,” he pledged firmly. “In twelve nights, look to the south.”

“In twelve nights, we will expect you from the south,” Fenarel confirmed without a blink. Nearly two hundred miles stretched between Wildervale and Sundermount, it was known, and aravels couldn't fly. He didn't ask why from the south, though he might have expected help to arrive from the north, through the Vimmark Mountain Pass.

Yaevinn gave him a curt nod, recognizing his courage and trust. “We will make our approach through the Dead Man's Pass, for first we must vanquish slaver bands roaming the coast. To have a clear retreat route ready, should the demons prove too numerous for our joint force,” he explained nonetheless. Youth learned both from life experience and from understanding the reasons behind decisions of the elders, and he couldn't count on Fenarel's Keeper to teach him that a battle was oft decided before it began.

“As you say, Mirthadra'mi,” Fenarel accepted the tactics with a quick nod of his own.

It was a relief to speak to a man who grasped what needed to be done and understood that the remains of the ancestors must have been possessed. Still, the tension in Yaevinn's muscles asked for physical release too. Alas, the aravel didn't afford him enough space to pace. Planting his feet wider to relieve at least some of the determined tightness within, he cautioned, “Fenarel, glyphs of repulsion must be cast and maintained around your camp.”

“I have asked Merrill to do so.” Fenarel's mouth twisted on the name of the Keeper's First. “She is at the task as we speak.”

The grimace didn't escape Yaevinn's eyes. Nor did his ears miss the lack of warmth when the youth mentioned her. _Theirs will be a loveless bonding,_ he thought. For, Merrill had been Fenarel's promised since she had still been crawling around on all fours. Upon her first flowering, they would bond. “Double the sentries,” he said aloud. “No one is to leave the camp after dark. Have you enough food to last until we arrive?”

Fenarel pursed his lips, considering. It took only a moment before he shook his head. “We must hunt.”

“Forage the Approach, but only by daylight,” Yaevinn allowed. “At night, stay near campfires, be vigilant, and use flame coating on your blades and arrows.”

Fenarel nodded and planted his feet wider too, faithfully mirroring his posture. It was a silent acceptance that didn't require words.

_We understand each other,_ Yaevinn reflected, giving the young man an encouraging look.

It was when Marethari flinched as if someone abruptly hid the images running before her inner eye. “The halla–”

“Are lost,” Yaevinn interrupted. He had tired of her failures, and dwelling on the losses wouldn't recoup them. His face hardened into a kingly mask of stone. “We will speak more when you are well.”

Hearing the stern words, Fenarel wrestled the message crystal out of her fingers, quite gently at that. They were kin of the same House after all. But an expression of disdain nestled on his face when he looked at her. A little sneer on his pretty mouth, a hard line of his jaw that hadn't been quite so distinct mere moments before, the twist in his cheek as he bit at it. Little clues speaking loud. Marethari had lost his trust, and he hadn't yet trained his face to conceal such feelings.

His countenance changed in a heartbeat as he turned his attention back to Yaevinn. His twisted facial muscles relaxed into their natural beauty, and his body tilted forward, reaching out to receive further orders and guidance.

The changes he saw touched Yaevinn's flesh with invisible fingers, encouraging a response. The tightness around his mouth melted. His fists uncurled, answering the wordless messages of trust contained in Fenarel's body bearing. “Go, I trust you to do what needs be done.” He took a step closer to the barrier. He couldn't place a hand on the youth's shoulder. A single step was all that he could offer right now to close the distance. But to grant more support, that he could, and did. “When you feel we need to talk, activate the crystal.”

Fenarel's eyes went wide and a blush of excitement rose to his cheeks, the rush of blood visible despite the bluish shade forced on his complexion by the glow of the moonstone. “As you say, Mirthadra'mi,” he croaked in a voice gone hoarse without warning. He had received a great privilege and responsibility in one.

_Call for me when you need me,_ Yaevinn thought, nodding a permission for the pair to leave. _No one as young as you should be expected to take on the Keeper's burdens._ His lips pressed together in a slight grimace. It pricked his conscience to ask so much of Fenarel, but Marethari wasn't leading her clan anywhere, for better or worse. She was still rocking back and forth when the window into their corner of the world closed. The image faded out of sight, the diaphanous sphere dissolved without a trace, the sunstone ceased humming and dimmed its light. Everything returned to its original state – and nothing did.

Without a thought behind the moves, he placed the bell glass in its ironwood bed, then retrieved his swordbelt from the peg. Dragon hide taken from the beast's underbelly felt soft and supple in his hands as he girded his slender waist. A dragon bone buckle closed in his fingers almost on its own. Polished to bring out the gray tint of the smooth bone, ornamented with a starmetal inlay worked in the stylized shape of Solium, it was a piece of true jewelry and a silent reminder of his duty. As if he could ever forget.

The same motif adorned the trilobate pommel of his sword. He traced it with his fingertips, feeling the slight dips where starmetal inlay met the dragon bone. His weapon differed in style from saberras, the single-edged, curved blades preferred by most elves. Its blade was straight and double-edged, on advice of the spirit of an ancient arcane warrior – one of the five who had bound Audacity. The spirit had imparted Dirth'ena Enasalin – the knowledge that led to victory – by sharing memories of the foregone life with Yaevinn, and he had seen the blade in them. Its copy that he now owned had been forged from one piece of starmetal. It bent without breaking, held edge like no other metal, and weighed so little that his arm didn't tire wielding it. For now the blade rested in its dragon hide sheath, but it would soon be drawn in defense of the People. His hand closed on the grip wrapped in stingray leather. The supple yet tough wrap greatly lessened vibrations that ran through the sword on impact. Unlike other kinds of leather, stingray didn't get slick when wet with blood. Its smoothly pebbled texture didn't betray the hand that wielded the sword; it didn't make it slip on the grip. That too was a piece of ancient knowledge that led to victory.

_What makes a victory these days?_ he reflected, and his mind readily supplied a sad answer: _To retrieve winter supplies and survive another harsh season._

His hand tightened on the grip. Yes, it would be enough of a victory and they would celebrate it. If this was what the High King had to do these days, he would do it. Dragon bone and starmetal wouldn't have it any differently, both being the inescapable symbols of the duties and cares he carried.

Only High Kings and their consorts were allowed to wield and wear these materials. For, dragons were the beasts dear to Mythal's heart. Starmetal was the solidified blood of the sun, Elgar'nan's sire. As All-Father and All-Mother ruled the gods, High Kings ruled the People. It mattered not to traditions that nowadays the People numbered only three thousand, sucklings and elders included. Nor did it matter to history that every day was a new battle for survival, in which victories were won not for glory but for freedom and enough food to fill the bellies.

He had to go, and speak to his brother. Then they would rouse the clan from sleep, and another long journey would begin.

The night kissed him hard on the mouth no later than he opened the door. It was a fervent kiss, feverish. A kiss awaking desires undisclosed. Those that could not be accessed by the mind, only by the soul, and language failed to express their fervor. He ached inside, and the storm trapped within was only partly to be blamed.

The harvest flies seemed to chirp louder as he stood on the porch, their amorous calls echoing against the silent walls of aravels. He heard the clan's halla, too. Two hours before dawn, they should be grazing. But they were drinking. He listened to their snorts, to gentle lapping of ripples against the wooden troughs placed in their enclosure, and he wondered just how well these four-legged brethren of the People foresaw future events. The halla resembled horse-sized deer, but the minds between their antlers were far from simple. They knew before the clan did that they would walk this day, leaving behind the lush, green pastures of the basin of the Minanter River.

A small huff leaked past his lips as he descended a short flight of portable steps to reach the ground. Isengrim had planned to stay in Wildervale through the summer and autumn. It was a good land, far enough both from Tantervale, which buzzed with zealots of the Maker, and from Kirkwall, whose harbor was the last thing seen by new-captured slaves before Tevinter slavers herded them aboard pretty ships that took them to an ugly future in chains. So long as the blood-and-tear-streaked trade stayed within the confines of private warehouses and secret docks, nobody cared about the law which made slavery a crime.

It was known amongst the Dalish, for a handful of slaves made their escape from the Imperium every year, and some eventually ran into one clan or another. If they were elves, they were taken in, and their tales warned their new kin.

_Beware of the black city built on blood and bones. Beware, and stay away if you value your freedom._ The words of the grim warning resounded in Yaevinn's head as he walked the passage between two orderly rows of aravels. Sundermount reared near the outskirts of Kirkwall, and he was going to lead his people there. Closer to perils, closer to the edge over which they could all tumble. His steps remained light and graceful, his thoughts heavy and dark. Clan Lavellan wisely gave Kirkwall a wide berth. Other parts of the Free Marches presented far less danger. He liked it here, in Wildervale. It was a shire dotted with small holdfasts whose owners had little desire to hunt elves. They preferred working their tiny fields enclosed by thick hedgerows and harvesting peat from the bogs. The local shem refrained from open hostilities, and so did the clan.

Isengrim led them along paths untrodden by quicklings, and wilderness nurtured them, its many gifts keeping them well fed and healthy. The woods abounded with roe deer and wild boars. Honeycombs dripping with the sweetest honey could be found in hollow trees. Hedgerows hosted plump woodcocks and partridges and pheasants. The streams and lakes brimmed with trout and salmon, pikes and lampreys. Onion grass and bear garlic, horse mint and sage, all could easily be harvested to lend flavor to every meal. The halla fattened, grazing meadows rich with lush grass rippling in a tender breeze. Wildervale was a kind and generous land. A peaceful land. It would be easy to call it home.

Honor-and-duty-bound, they had to leave it now, and trudge across two hundred miles. Marethari's noble face appeared on his mind, the image sharp, feeding his inner storm. Its charge was pricking like thousands needles. _Once she will have regained her wits, we will talk,_ he promised himself. _She will give me a very good reason why she has led her clan out of Planasene Forest, or I will make her renounce her title._ On he strode, passing through shadows cast by the aravels. Their large spoked wheels reminded him of Solium. The stylized sunburst which could just as well be a burst of lightning seemed determined to appear everywhere, even as a twisted shade on the ground. Whether the omen heralded Elgar'nan's agreement or disagreement with his thoughts remained unclear. All-Father had never spoken to him, but he knew that he was right.

The passageway spilled into a broad ring road connecting all parts of the encampment. Framed with boar-skin tents under whose protection the sleepers dreamed their dreams, the well trodden path led past the campfires. Their flames had died out around midnight and rough-hewed benches had been abandoned till morn. A wooden statue of Sylaise patiently watched over them, sitting by her spinning wheel limned only by moonshine. The goddess of peace and plenty kept the hearths, though the Dalish only had braziers and campfires now. And though Yaevinn didn't halt his steps, his eyes turned to her and his lips moved in a quiet plea for her favor, “Las mala enaste, Sylaise. Keep their supplies safe. Ma serannas for mala halani.”

She remained silent, her head tilted to a side in listening to the tune of her spinning wheel as she spun the silver thread of moonlight. His gaze left her to her vigil. Gods no longer spoke to the People in the living world, and he lacked the talents of the Somniari. Dreamers, mages of rare powers, might be able to catch the divine voices in the Beyond where the pantheon dwelt in exile.

In the dark, near and far, he heard quiet steps of ten hunters on their way to relay the current watch. Each of them unerringly headed to his assigned post, a place known better than the back of his own hand.

It was time, and Yaevinn's brother was waiting. He took a shortcut across the grassless ground of the campfire field, knowing where he would find him. On the main path to the encampment, near the statue of Fen'Harel. For reasons passing Yaevinn's understanding, Isengrim seemed to seek out the Dread Wolf's company, even if it was only in the form of an oak wood statue carved in the likeness of an ordinary wolf. He always stood his night watch in its shadow. Odd, considering that traditions required the Keeper to guard the clan _against_ Fen'Harel. High King Isengrim ignored this particular piece of lore, and Clan Lavellan was none the worse for it.

Where a glimmering glyph of repulsion blocked the path, where the Dread Wolf cast his long shadow, there Yaevinn saw his brother.

Broad of shoulder, built robustly yet not in an ungainly way, Isengrim stood six feet and two inches tall; two inches taller than Yaevinn. By daylight, he wasn't a man easy to overlook. At night, when he didn't want to be seen and heard, human senses wouldn't have perceived his presence. The Great Wolf's dark shadow seemed to shelter him, intimately caressing his gear of dragon hide and webbing. Dyed pine-green and earth-brown, the leather retained a hint of icy gleam. It had been taken from an ice dragon, and its origin wouldn't be concealed.

Isengrim seemed to be lost in deep thoughts as he stood there, leaning a part of his weight against his staff. Crafted from the black heartwood of the tree of Mythal, lustrous like dragon scales and hard like dragonglass, it was a symbol of his duties. And he did look like a shepherd with that staff in hand. A divine shepherd summoned by All-Mother to guide the People on their paths.

He faced the road leading into woods and didn't turn his head toward Yaevinn, although he must have heard him come. Gazing far, where the velvety predawn sky caressed the treetops of the forest, he said, “I have had a dream in which I have seen our kingdom come.” It was a soft statement, despite the signature gruffness of his voice which only ever carried a hint of softness in the way he spoke the sibilants. But now it was undeniably soft and dreamy, and Yaevinn couldn't catch but a trace of the raw, low growl that he had been hearing for more than two centuries.

It made him halt his steps and hover on the spot. “What have you seen?” he asked when the unexpected words fully registered in his troubled mind.

“A broken field of ruby blood on which a great black wolf fought a corrupted dragon,” Isengrim replied, his eyes still enraptured by something that only he could see in the night. “A golden stag entered the fray on the wolf's side.”

A heaviness washed over Yaevinn's body. He struggled to find the right words, and they were hard to come by. “Our stag?” he asked at last, in a parched voice. Its timbre was still as warm as a summer night. But it was a dry summer night and one spark could set it afire. He wanted to believe, he wanted to believe so much that his heart ached with the undisclosed desire he held within. With the burning need for the People to have a land that they all could call home. A land where the endless journey would at last end. He wanted Halamshiral come again.

Isengrim nodded. “I would know him anywhere. And he was crowned.”

Yaevinn took an uncertain step closer. The prophecy was pulling him. He knew that his brother had the gift to foresee some events long before they came. But the images that Isengrim saw in his dreams were riddles, full of metaphors. Symbols could easily mislead the unwary. And they couldn't afford to be misled.

Isengrim turned to him, his aquamarine eyes agleam with conviction. “Verily I say unto you, from a great battle our kingdom shall be reborn.” He reached out and squeezed Yaevinn's shoulder, speaking both through the touch and words. “The time is nigh. For this is the age of Fen'Harel, brother, the age of rebellion.”

Yaevinn's mouth twisted as conflicting emotions tugged at him. He trusted his brother, but investing one's faith in Fen'Harel sounded like a folly. “'Tis also the age of chaos,” he warned, laying his own hand over his brother's to soften the disagreement. “It was in the age of Fen'Harel that Arlathan fell to the shem.”

“It was the age when the first Lavellans followed him,” Isengrim returned. “Perhaps our ancestors escaped slavery thanks to him. Who can say when so much of our past has been lost?” Pulling gently away from the contact, he added, “Asha'bellanar does not speak ill of him, and through her mouth comes Mythal's will.”

“Would I could share your certainty, brother,” Yaevinn sighed. His arm fell back to his side. Despite the doubts, his posture remained open. His body held no desire to clench his fists, cross his arms, or otherwise reject Isengrim's opinions. They shared a few joys and many sorrows. No disagreement could ever erase either. “Did you see the outcome of the battle?” he asked softly.

“The dragon was defeated,” Isengrim told him. After a bit and with a touch of uncertainty to his voice, he continued, “But only its dead body and our crowned stag remained in the field. The wolf vanished. I know not the meaning of his disappearance.” He shook his head, the gesture carrying more than a hint of frustration. “I must speak to Asha'bellanar, Yaevinn. She is calling me to Sundermount, and her summons must be answered.”

Yaevinn winced. He misliked the sound of this. What kind of game were they called to play? These summons couldn't be a work of chance. “Sundermount is overrun by demons,” he said. “Has she told you that?”

“When do gods and their messengers speak plainly?” Isengrim shrugged.

“Good that we are no gods then,” Yaevinn remarked, and decided to speak as plainly as possible. “Clan Sabrae is stranded in the Approach, their halla dead, their winter supplies left behind at the foot of Sundermount. They need help.”

None of it seemed to surprise Isengrim. “So it has begun,” he said, nodding to himself. “Asha'bellanar knew that we would come.” He tipped his head back and for a few moments watched the star-strewn skies in silence.

Yaevinn couldn't but follow the example. Solium and Draconis gleamed so bright that it became easier to believe that All-Father and All-Mother still watched over the living world. _Perhaps All-Mother has truly found a way to reach past the Veil and speaks through the mouth of_ _Asha'bellanar,_ he thought, his gaze returning to his brother. _Just as you claim._

Isengrim's posture didn't change. His charcoal-brown hair spilled to his shoulder blades, its entwisted strands yearning for gentle hands that would run a comb through them just one more time. For the small hands that used to untangle knots in his hair and lift heavy weight from his shoulders. It came to Yaevinn's mind that his brother was not looking for the signs from gods, that he was just trying to catch a glimpse of En'cara's face in the night sky. She had died in summer, eighty-four years ago, as had their parents. Tevinter slavers had slain them during a raid. On the peak of Sundermount, they had been laid to rest. On the peak of the mountain overrun by demons now. He shuddered to think that their remains might be possessed too.

The Dread Wolf's shadow darkened. And Draconis etched it veilfire into the spirit rune in the blade of Isengrim's staff stirred. Cold aquamarine light shivered on the outline of a dragon in flight. Mythal had spoken, and Isengrim said, “Sound the horn, brother.”

Without a word, Yaevinn reached for the ithirril-bound dragon horn hung from his swordbelt. His lungs burned with effort as he blew it. A low, ominous sound vibrated through the night for endless moments. It drowned out chirping of the harvest flies. And it drowned peace. He blew it hard so he wouldn't think of it. So he wouldn't ponder how impossible it sounded that three thousand of scattered people could see their kingdom come.

On and on the horn called, and the clan answered the summons. He heard the sleepers rise from their bedrolls and reach for their gear. They knew, the horn never called in vain.

He and Isengrim returned to the camp side by side. Under the statues of Elgar'nan and Mythal, they halted their steps. Facing the road running into the woods, they waited. And the clan came.

All ninety souls gathered under the star-strewn sky. All ninety souls beheld Mythal's dragon soar. No torchlight dimmed the gleam of the rune. They had no need of fire to see in the dark.

Yaevinn looked and saw, his kin and friends, from sucklings to elders. There stood Isengrim's daughters Iseabail and Fedelmid, both disheveled and sleepy still. Unbonded as of yet, they had arrived together, without partners. And there Isengrim's elder son Angus –the future High King – held his Eldica around the shoulders. She was leaning against him, and her own hands were full of their twisting yearling Urien, displeased with the sudden end of his sleep. Their elder son Peredur kept them company, irritated as he seemed with his sibling's screaming. Next came Isengrim's younger son Galarr, his left arm wrapped around his Seonag's broad waist. She was big with his child, and he didn't seem to mind that her light gait had changed into a heavy waddle. For her, even the hardness in his eyes melted. And there stood Nuallan Vaharel, Isengrim's Second, and Lleu Mathalin, Master Crafter at the age of a hundred and five. Close friends, both fast to laugh, they seemed joined by the hip. Tonight, their lips didn't twitch over some private jest just exchanged. They acknowledged the grimness of the moment with calm, almost expressionless faces. Their sisters Luigsech Vaharel and Ysolt Mathalin stood with them, Ysolt's five year old daughter Roslindis tugging at her mother's hand, her desire to be lifted up apparent. It didn't take her long to succeed. Ysolt's features softened as she snuggled her child, holding her close for comfort.

More people, more tales, more faces. He beheld each and every one of them, all known and dear to him. Eighteen children and youths, four elders, sixty-six men and women in full vigor. The clan that depended on him and Isengrim.

The harvest flies chirped entirely too loud, as if they wanted to drown out the words that were about to be spoken.

His feet planted wide, Isengrim began the chant, his voice back to its gruff timbre, “We are the Dalish. Keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path.”

Holding his chin high, Yaevinn took over, “We are the last of the Elvhenan”–his voice rumbled like thunder on the words, acquiring the deep and dark quality of the nature's wrath unleashed–“and never again shall we submit.”

Urien cried in his mother's arms, but all who could speak answered, “We are the Dalish: walkers of the lonely path.”

It was the hymn of the People, their truth for too many centuries. They sang it loudly in determined, defiant and proud voices. As they had always done, despite their dwindling numbers.

He didn't want to think of it when he finished the chant, “It is the time to walk.” They all knew the sound of his horn, and they all knew they wouldn't walk in peace.

*

**WOUNDED COAST**

**THE 18** **th** **DAY OF THE MONTH OF SOLACE, 9:30 DRAGON AGE**

 

A fresh breeze lashed the waters of the Waking Sea, making them buck under its whip. The tide was low at sunset, baring a vast plain of pale sand dotted with darker rocky beds. Seagulls cruising overhead screamed loudly, excited with the feast laid out for them on the exposed shore. Oft, a bird would dive through the air, quick and graceful like a knife. And when it flapped up again, it had a slender silvery fish squirming in its beak. For reasons passing Yaevinn's understanding, this kind of fish sought refuge in the sand when the sea fell back. But when the beach lost some of its moistness, the fish wriggled up, onto the sun-beaten surface. To be spotted and devoured by a hungry bird. It made no sense to him unless the only purpose of the fish's existence was to be eaten.

This eve, the seagulls had to compete for their dinner with his clan. Hahren Seonag and the elders were teaching children to forage the coast. From nestlings as young as three to youths on the brink of starting their apprenticeship, the younglings were combing the beach, harvesting the odd fish, crabs, and mussels. They had just found a treasure bed of the latter, its rocks carpeted with pearly black shells. Wind carried their chatter and laughter to his ears. For a moment longer, his eyes dwelt on them. Despite her big belly, Seonag was helping Roslindis pluck her first mussel ever. “Grab it and twist and pull it off,” she was saying, guiding the tiny fingers in the task. A whoop of success followed fast.

“'Tis easy to get delighted when one is five,” Isengrim remarked, with the hint of a smile to his voice.

Yaevinn made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. Despite its raw beauty, he misliked this place. The Wounded Coast, a strip of stark land that could never heal from its blood-soaked past. It had been on its rocks and sands that slavers had attacked the clan eighty-four years ago.

They had been journeying to Planasene Forest for wintering, and had almost reached the safe haven of its trees when the assault had come. Eighty-four years later, he could still see his parents put themselves in the way of savage blows to protect En'cara and Isengrim's twins. The girls had been one year old, screaming in fear. He still heard those loud screams and could not get fast enough to them from the place he fought.

The slavers had had renegade templars in their ranks and those had rendered all magic useless. He had met the foes, an ironbark blade to steel. And he had survived, while his parents and En'cara had not.

No matter how many slavers he had killed since, he couldn't erase the memory of those that he hadn't slain in time.

He wanted to be gone from this place. But the forces of nature conspired against him. The breeze blew from Kirkwall, and aravels couldn't sail into the wind. Their red silk sails remained furled, and only the strength of the halla hauled them across the endless rocks and sands of the Wounded Coast that would not heal.

He turned on his heel and saw all thirteen of them lumber along the beach, each pulled by a matched pair of the clan's halla. Angus and Nuallan walked with them, casting spells that hardened the sand. The ground under large wheels darkened – gleaming like paragon's luster in the setting sun, and he could hear the incessant rattle as the wheels turned on and on, always in the same, unchanging pace.

They were making good progress. One more night on the coast, and they would reach the Approach by the next dusk as he had promised. But there was no peace, no satisfaction in the thought.

He pulled a deep, frustrated breath. Strong, disconcerting smells fumed up his nose. Seaweed and fish and brine. Here, even the wind tasted tangy, of all the salt it carried. The taste kept stirring ugly memories. With a huff, he spun on the heel once more and resumed the walk, toward the sunset. The sky donned pink and gold, but he didn't see its allure. His inner eye saw the black walls of Kirkwall. Seagulls kept screaming, but he didn't hear their shrill calls. He heard his nieces' cries.

“Great anger is consuming you,” Isengrim reflected quietly, matching his pace.

“I could say the same,” Yaevinn returned.

They had slaughtered a band of slavers mere hours ago, and nobody could accuse Isengrim of a lack of wrath. His rage was no longer perceivable as he strode beside him, untiring in his ice dragon leathers that kept him cool regardless the heat of the day. He carried his staff in the right hand easily as if it were a mere twig and not a hefty piece of hardwood. And no one who would look in his handsome round face, which for some reason didn't appear round, would believe that the beast within the man had clawed free and had disemboweled a slaver, dragging his entrails through the blood-drenched sand until the intestines had looked like long, blue and glistening ropes.

“That I cannot deny,” Isengrim allowed, casting him a sidelong glance. “But your ire blinds you. You want Marethari to renounce her title, and no reason that she will state for leaving Planasene Forest will be good enough to change your mind.”

It made Yaevinn snap his head toward him. His brother's aquamarine gaze met his glare calmly. _How do you know?_ he wanted to ask; they had not spoken of it yet. But Isengrim had always seen into him, and so he refrained from the pointless question. “She leads her people from disaster to disaster,” he said instead. “You must see that.”

“I do,” Isengrim confirmed with a firm nod. “As I see that her First is unequal to the tasks of the Keeper. Merrill has powerful magic, in that Marethari is not mistaken. But she lacks discipline, wisdom, charisma, and pragmatism required of a strong leader. If Merrill becomes the Keeper, Clan Sabrae will face hardships we cannot even begin to imagine.”

The statement gave Yaevinn pause. _Is there more than resentment over an undesired bonding in the way Fenarel's mouth twists on her name?_ he thought. He knew all hunters, for they also served the clans as warriors. He knew all young male mages, for he would have to soon find his First Hand and his Second Hand amongst them. His heir and spare. But of Merrill, he had had little tidings. And it had not crossed his mind that she might bring about more harm that Marethari. He shook his head. “She is young. If you become her Protector, she will lead the clan in nothing more than in title for the next eighty years. Can she not learn from you?”

“You cannot teach a fish to climb trees,” Isengrim sighed. “I ask it of you to relent, Yaevinn. _For now,_ Marethari must remain in her position.”

The emphasis on the two words made Yaevinn raise his eyebrows and offer a questioning gaze. “You have a plan,” he prompted, the tingle under his skin shifting its quality. Jabbing needles vanished. The charge still coursed through him, but hope gave it a pleasing feel. Almost as if a cat was brushing against his skin from within.

“The foundation of a plan, rather,” Isengrim corrected. “I have consulted the statutes, reviewed precedents. It is considered good and lawful to examine a Keeper's capacity to lead, provided that their clan has suffered great losses. Nobody shall disagree that the loss of all halla and of winter supplies has brought severe privation upon Clan Sabrae. Thus, an investigation is called for.”

After almost a year, Yaevinn felt the corners of his lips quirk up. “Had I realized tomes of statutes hold such treasures, I would have explored them more thoroughly.”

“Uncle led you to study the way of war. Poring over heavy tomes, I envied you that,” Isengrim admitted with a soft headshake. “But now I know, judgments passed by our forefathers guide us still, binding from ages unto ages. We honor the old laws, old ways. And in doing so, we maintain the spirit of the People. So we do not lose ourselves again.”

Yaevinn looked into the clear aquamarine eyes and saw the truths of his brother's justice. The tangle had to be unraveled in a lawful way. Without laws, without traditions, without the guidance of the forefathers, they would become bandits, nothing more. He nodded, then glanced away. And almost started in surprise. Upon his brother's words, the scene around him changed its tone. Or something inside him had shifted, and allowed him to see it with new eyes.

The breeze was snatching noise away from the laboring column of elves, halla, and aravels, but he could catch snippets of conversations here and there. The life didn't pause just because they were traversing dangerous places. To their side, the youngest younglings were still foraging, harvesting the gifts of the sea. And they were laughing, making jests as they worked. Siobhan and the elders kept a watchful eye on them, so none would come to any harm. Apprentice hunters were shooting pigeons that were just returning to the cliffs to roost for the night. Dinner was going to be abundant. All over the beach, crafters were already gathering dry driftwood for cookfires. Iseabail and her two apprentices were picking up spindleweed, a herb useful when lung fever struck in winter. Herded gently by Fedelmid and her aid, young halla scampered around unrestrained, never far from their mothers.

Ten hunters guarded the aravels. Ten scouted for signs of slavers, and twenty walked with Yaevinn and Isengrim ahead of the main column but close enough to reach it in time, should any danger sneak upon it from behind.

He took it all in. These were his people, a tight-knit clan. They were no bandits. They were the last of the Elvhenan, they were the proud Dalish. And they upheld their laws.

He nodded again, fiercely now, and his eyes met his brother's in understanding.

“Marethari shall be granted a hearing and I will have her reasons for venturing past the boundaries of Planasene Forest,” Isengrim said. “Should I find that her decision was made against the best interest of the clan, I will invoke the Right of Guardianship and appoint a Lord Guardian to guide the clan in her stead while she remains its titular Keeper for life. Upon her death, the title will pass to him.”

The lawful way was not always the easiest way to follow. Yaevinn glanced at the restless sea, at the rolling masses of dark water with strong undercurrents and treacherous rocks under the surface. Not in the search of answers; they weren't there. But the disquiet of the Waking Sea helped him perceive hardships that would come in the wake of this solution. They would have to sail choppy waters, and he steeled himself for the experience. “The last Ior'amae was made eight centuries ago,” he said, recalling a cautionary tale of the disappearance of Ameridan Ghilain and of the unrest that followed. Like then within Clan Ghilain, strife would now arise within Clan Sabrae as Marethari's kin wouldn't take kindly to the new-appointed Lord Guardian. Nor would Merrill's House be pleased to see her taken out of the line of succession. His flesh tightened in expectation of a tumultuous future. “Brother, this will bring an upheaval.”

“Canceling an established succession line to a Keeper's title is never popular,” Isengrim acknowledged, his tone heavy with the weight of the decision he had made. “Yet, facing the displeasure of Houses Talas and Rin is preferable to our other option – to letting the succession run its current course. Clan Sabrae needs a capable leader, and I mean to give them one. In a lawful way.”

“As you say,” Yaevinn agreed. His heart drummed the agreement against his ribcage. He felt the thuds. And he felt his body heat rising from the core. He hadn't grown tired or overheated under the sun beating on him all day; his shirt preserved his vigor, his ithirril mail allowed the breeze to blow through and cool his flesh. The heat spreading through him now came as in answer to a keen sense of purpose. The lawful way would displease two of the three Dalish clans headed by princes, but it had to be followed. And he would sail this course with his brother, and weather the storm awaiting them. The storm he had helped to birth.

It was when the sound of slithering sand caught his attention. His eyes shot to the right where a steep slope clung to a weathering sandstone cliff. A sandy path climbed up the incline sparse-coated with beachgrass. Amongst the shaggy tufts, trickles of sand were rolling downhill, launched into motion by steps of the clan's scouts.

Sure on their feet, three men were half-sliding, half-running down the path. It meant one thing only. They had spotted slavers. Yaevinn quickened his own pace into a light trot, as did Isengrim and the hunters following them. They met the scouts at the foot of the cliff.

“How many?” Yaevinn asked no later than his nephew Galarr stood before him, flushed from the exertion.

“Seven men,” Galarr replied. “On a chase.”

“Their prey?”

“One man.” Galarr spat out a spittle tainted with dust. “Exhausted.”

Yaevinn's nostrils flared. _Worse than wolves, always after the lonely, the weakened._ His lips pulled back, baring his pearly teeth. Through the pounding in his ears, he heard a guttural noise leaving his brother's mouth. The beast in Isengrim was clawing his way to the surface. His own storm roiled, filling every fiber of his being with unalloyed power. Its surges no longer hurt, for it sensed its freedom rushing close. “Lead us, Galarr,” he ordered. “Eight men with us. The rest, call everyone back to the aravels and guard them.”

Galarr led them up the eroding slope. Under a cover of sand bleached almost white, there still was solid sandstone, Yaevinn felt its distant firmness through the soles of his boots. But the rock lay too deep to lend him true support. To climb the hill felt like wading through a shifting marsh. The sand tugged at his feet, trying to slow him down. Every step was a struggle for balance, a fight for not sliding back down. Until he felt a force spread under the treacherous sands, pushing him up. His soles touched the surface and the ground beneath hardened. He didn't glance down to see if it had the shine of the paragon's luster. He knew it was so; Angus or Nuallan had cast the spell.

Light on his feet once again, he ran the rest of the way up. His heels never hit the path; he sprang off the ground with his toes. His calves burned with the effort. It was a good kind of pain, warming him up for the fight. Soon they gained the top. On the plateau, the surface changed. Winds had swept most of the sand off the cliff. Only larger grains remained sprinkled over the pale rock beneath. Their pace grew. Quicklings said that trying to catch an elf was like trying to catch the wind. And they proved the saying right, racing where Galarr led them, backtracking the footprints of the scouting party.

Galarr was the living image of younger Isengrim. Only lighter in his body build, with a face less innocent than his father's used to be at the age of six score years and fifteen. Isengrim's eyes used to be soft and wide-open to the world, while Galarr's appeared always narrowed, with a glint of hardness to their aquamarine irises. Now they never left the barely perceivable trail.

The focus served them all well. The Wounded Coast was a maze where the unwary could easily get lost. It didn't seem so on its beaches, but on the cascade of sandstone shelves that had once been a part of a dramatic undersea landscape of steep slopes and of channels winding through the shelved sediments, the seaside revealed its labyrinthine nature.

The trail ended near the edge of the plateau. Beneath curved a holloway, a memory of a channel long gone. It must have been deeper once. Now its rock bottom lay under a thick layer of sand swept off the plateau.

“Ran that way.” Galarr pointed to the left. Blood prints left behind by a pair of bare feet confirmed his words.

_A fugitive._ Yaevinn gritted his teeth. Many escaped slavery barefoot. Few if any made it as far as here.

The plateau rose only seven feet odd above the sunken lane. He jumped down, onto the cushion of sand. In that moment he was a mountain lion, his flesh in the perfect balance of controlled tightness and limpness that the beast exercised in its leaps. His knees bent on impact. Straightened before his mind knew it. He heard the thuds as the feet of his companions hit the ground. And he was running again. A need in him burned more than his lungs. He craved to arrive in time, before the runaway came to harm. It made him sprint and not care whether the others followed close. He knew that Isengrim and Galarr did. They shared the same haunting memories of the blood-soaked day on the sands of the Wounded Coast. The memories that made every slaver their mortal enemy.

On they raced, shaking off the clutches of sand with every step.

The road split before them. The bloody footsteps veered to the right, up the broader fork of half-bared rock. _His feet must be all raw flesh, no skin,_ Yaevinn thought. And as the cruel image entered his mind, his wrath became a storm unleashed. The sharp, biting smell of ozone filled the air around him and lightning bolts sprang through his gear. Clad in the brilliant charge of his magic, he chased after the fugitive's pursuers, bounding from one bare slab of sandstone to another.

His breath was coming in torn heaves now, the pain in his lungs and side jabbing like a knife. He let it jab and didn't slow down. A ragged inhale brought him a smell of withered grass, musk, and clotted blood. Isengrim's beast was clawing his way to the skin. The bear was almost there. “Not now!” he gasped. Not until they saw the field.

His flaring nostrils caught something else still. The stench of burned flesh. He would have cried out his disappointment. They were late. But a cold, clogging reek of death and decay killed the shout before it was born in his throat. The smell didn't belong. It lingered in tombs which fresh air reached only when they got open for another entombing. But there shouldn't be any tombs here.

He drew his sword, the starmetal of the blade whooshing against dragon hide. He heard a rustle as the hunters flipped back the flaps of their quivers. He heard a rattle as they pulled out arrows.

And then the path turned. He rounded the corner and looked into the sunset yet again. Under the pretty skies streaked with pink and gold sprawled an ugly scene of destruction.

The path widened before a caved-in adit whose mouth lay near the top of this sandstone shelf. The sundown light still crept over the edge to limn the oval space enclosed by weathered pale rock. The silent barrier gave the place the feel of an arena where the ancient stone was meant to be the only spectator.

The fight seemed to be all but done. Warm sunbeams embraced its apparent victor – a fat man clad in lustrous cotton. The light gave him in a rosy wash he didn't deserve. The swine dressed in shiny clothes chanted in old Tevene. Yaevinn recognized the language, and some of the words. Words that formed a terrible litany to demons hungry for a body of flesh and bones.

The demons had answered the summons. Had taken hold of the dead. Gleaming scraps of molten metal clung to charred flesh that no longer oozed blood, only black ichor. All hair had burnt away, the eyes had burst, the features disappeared as muscles had twisted in the fire. Rosy flesh peeked from under the demonic coating of thick black fluid. Three such creatures the arena held. And a fourth one that hadn't tasted the heat of flames. Only the edge of a blade that had cleaved its head in half. Congealed blood and brains mingled with the reeking ichor dripping down its mutilated face. Death didn't keep any of them from wielding steel. Blades drawn, all four possessed corpses lumbered close to a fallen man who lay motionless near the eastern side of the arena.

_The fugitive. Alive still._ He had to be otherwise his remains would have been shambling around. “Thi!” Yaevinn shouted, sweeping the shape of the stranger's broken body with a fluid gesture of his free hand. His voice fell, and Isengrim's rose behind him in a roar. “Caith ar ais!”

A transparent shield sprang up around the still man first, blocking incoming blows. Before the demons could land any, a glimmering silver glyph appeared on the blood-drenched sand under him. Its force flared, shoving back the walking corpses, knocking them off their feet.

Something called to Yaevinn's magic from the place where the stranger lay. Its voice joined his magic, and didn't feel foreign. Faint, but not foreign. The storm embraced it, and didn't devour it. It felt as if it guided the call into Yaevinn's very veins where it remained safe while the storm rampaged around him. No longer trapped within, its power came to his aid without summoning.

He felt a thunderbolt being born high above the field, and called for the protective shield once more. Its warmth spread around him and his party before the bolt ripped through the clear sky and struck the corpse whose head dangled by a thread of sinew and skin. The blast ripped it off. The land shook, the air burned with ozone, and the sundered head flew good twenty feet before it crashed against a rock. It didn't stop the corpse. Headless, it was rising again.

Deep furrows in the sand, charred clay void of human spirit though it was moving still, chunks of flesh and bone dotting the space... it all told the tale of the fight. The slaver must have sacrificed his own men to defeat the lone fugitive.

Yaevinn knew that the chanting swine would try to strike them with such a spell or fire. As he knew it would never come to pass. From the corner of his eye, he saw the slaver twirl his staff, surprisingly fast given his weight. The sweaty, swollen face contorted in fury. The fat of the man's belly obscenely shook as he worked his magic. In half a heartbeat, a flame engulfed the blade of the staff, ready to serve the mage's will.

Then ironbark swished through the reeking air, fast and sharp and deadly. A cry of pain tore out of the slaver as the arrows punched through his rich robe and buried themselves in his fat and flesh. He dropped the staff. And the flame was gone.

The Dalish were the best archers in the world.

Yaevinn had no time to watch the mage's last breaths. The walking corpses had meantime scrambled back to their feet, unshaken in their intent by any obstacle, unconcerned with the fate of the one who had stolen them from death. Yaevinn flourished his blade, drawing a spiral in the air. His voice rumbled like thunder as he called out the words of power, “Dubh-aighein Tarraingeadh!” The magic flared through him, then through the starmetal of his sword. Faster than wind its beam flew. And when it touched the ground behind the corpses, it burst and spread and formed a gray smoky cloud of force that yanked them all to its center.

Arrows hissed again, hailing down upon the demons. Some caught them in the necks, causing wounds that would have been fatal for a mortal. But dead flesh refused to die. It struggled against the hold of his spell, never ceasing to try to reach the fallen man.

It was when he sensed Isengrim shift his shape. He didn't glimpse a flash of brilliant light. He didn't catch the moment when his brother left and the bear came. But the strong smell of withered grass, musk, and clotted blood punched his nose, and he knew.

Isengrim charged past him at devastating speed. Yaevinn's eyes caught only a blur of charcoal-brown fur and four legs hitting the ground in mighty bounds, furrowing a wake through blood-streaked sand. “Throm Troighean!” he called out, clenching his left hand in a tight fist. Half a heartbeat later, his fingers uncurled forcefully and blasted a blazing-white mark at the corpses. It formed a veil of shimmering light around them, slowing them down to a crawl.

Isengrim slammed into the vessel of a stubborn demon that strained against the power of two spells. It staggered, and fell. The bear pinned the body down. In the same way as he had entrapped another one this day. Then he had fed on the man's legs and buttocks, ripping the living flesh with abandon, indifferent to his victim's screams.

They had all watched in silence then. Galarr with his hard, narrowed eyes and with a smile of approval on his lips. The cries of the dying man had acquired a screechy note when Isengrim had rolled him onto his back and bit through the leathers covering his belly. The screams had turned coarse, then into nigh on soundless noises when vocal cords had given up under the great strain. Robbed of his voice, the slaver had still been feebly squirming when Isengrim's inner beast pulled his innards out, dragging him by the viscera through the sand. It had taken the man long to die. And it had been a fitting end for someone whose deeds had inflicted endless agony on others.

Isengrim didn't feed on this prey. It was already dead, he couldn't eat it alive as the bear's nature commanded. Mauling the charred squirming remains, he buried his sickle-shaped claws in the flailing arm that still held a sword and tore it off. It almost looked as though he swatted away a fly, but the swipe of his massive paw sent the severed limb several feet away. Black ichor oozed out of the open veins.

It all took a mere moment. The bear moved faster than fire on dry kindling.

“Go for their arms!” Galarr called out.

And he was right. The torn off limb didn't writhe anymore.

Bows abandoned, blades drawn, they charged the entrapped demons at full tilt. And another ripped off arm slid across the sand to greet them. Isengrim was tearing the demon limb from limb. The corpse held down by his sixty-four stones of weight grew still and limp as dead should be. Its vessel maimed, the demonic entity abandoned it. Or died.

Yaevinn didn't care which was the case. But in a flash he realized that while they had ten skilled fighters amongst them who could and would defeat the evil spirits no longer supported by the chant, only he wielded healing magic. The stranger's life could leak out onto the sand while he engaged walking corpses. And he would be late again. Death couldn't be healed.

The battle rush gripped him tight, demanding that he fight. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. His eyes refused to tear away from the struggling foes. His very flesh screamed to rage like Isengrim did, with his nostrils flared and teeth bared.

But there was a fight, and then there was a fight to save a life.

He fell back to do the latter.

It broke the hold of the battle rush on him. His feet no longer longed to bring him toe to toe with a lumbering corpse. He dashed toward the fallen man, and his storm slid back under his skin like his blade into its sheath. His thoughts had turned away from the enemy and no longer sustained the roiling lightning.

The biting odor of ozone faded, the fresh smell of a summer storm arrived. It mingled with the reek of burned flesh and cold death in a stomach-turning blend. But Yaevinn's stomach didn't turn, it dropped, heavy and hard like a stone. All because he laid his eyes on the wounded man and beheld the source of the voice that had joined his magic earlier.

Under a layer of gore that had splattered the stranger from head to toes, white markings struggled to be seen. On the arms, on the neck, even on the chin. In a twisted way, they resembled Vallaslin, the blood writing. Only, the swirling patterns ran much thicker under the suntanned skin. And the substance that filled them wasn't nearly as innocent as the powder made of pine bark, volcanic gold ground with vinegar, gall, and blue vitriol soaked in a blend of pure water and leek juice. The matter that had been fused with this elf's flesh was pure lyrium, a death-bringer to those without magic and a dangerous servant to the rest. Even a powerful mage couldn't survive a high overdose. Yet, some cruel creature must have poured it into the stranger's wounds, for reasons conceivable only by a mad mind. The sight of the terrible scars made Yaevinn's heart clench with compassion. _Who has done this to you?_ he wanted to ask, but not a word passed his lips. His midriff hurt as if someone had just winded him. And he could not catch his breath.

The white-haired stranger couldn't breathe properly either. His breath wheezed feebly in his chest. There was a gurgle and a faint rattle to every pained inhale and exhale. He looked so vulnerable and so broken as he lay on the wet sand, his fingers stained with a paste of someone's blood and shit, his feet coated with the same in addition to his own blood. For someone who had obviously cleaved a man's head in half, he appeared almost too light and fragile. Starved, most like. He had a fierceness in him though. A fire that must have kept him alive through the torture the marking must have inflicted upon him. A flame that had forced his feet to cross the sands even if the grains had all but flayed his soles.

Yaevinn's heartbeat raced as he took it all in, but his mind calmed as he locked all his senses on the stranger to probe for the cause of the wheezing. As his eyes registered a deep dent in the left side of the man's chest piece, it dawned on him that the fugitive had taken the full brunt of the explosion that had ripped another body asunder.

_Broken ribs. A punctured lung,_ Yaevinn thought. Without the aid of magic, the man would have had perhaps an hour of life left. Less if he moved in a violent way.

Yaevinn's lips pressed together in a conflicted grimace. Fugitives who made their escape from the chains of slavery feared magic above all other things. Tevinter mages gave them a strong cause. It was known that they augmented the power of their spells with blood. With the blood of slaves. Oft, the terror made those who had fled from such a cruel fate lash out even against healers attempting to help them. And he couldn't allow this man to move in any way that would worsen the injury.

Leaning over him, he quickly sketched an outline of a lute above his face, breathing, “Atish'an.” _Peace._ It was a charm that the Dalish used to calm a troubled mind. It was the charm that helped a woman deliver her child when she thought she no longer had the strength to push. It was the charm that convinced a gravely wounded hunter to last through the healer's work. It was the charm that soothed a halla mourning the death of their mate. It didn't take away the pain, but it allayed fear.

He dropped to his knees beside the brave fugitive. Looking into his handsome suntanned face, he saw the signs of pain that racked his body. A paleness spread under his skin, turning it ashen. Framed with bloodstained white hair, it presented a living image of misery. There was a red moistness in and under his fluttering eyelashes, and Yaevinn couldn't tell whether he had received a spray of blood even there or whether his eyes had been damaged by the blast and bled. He would need to check it later.

_Hold on. This is not where your journey ends. You are too young to die,_ he thought. From afar, he had taken the stranger for a much older man on account of the color of his hair, but when he truly saw his delicate features under the flaking splatters of blood, he knew that he was still young. Suffering and lyrium must have bleached color out of his hair. _You have survived the markings, you will survive this too._

The charm quieted anxiety and fears, but it couldn't establish trust. The markings complicated the treatment as Yaevinn had no way to tell how the lyrium would react to his magic. If the man was to remain still through the working, he first had to feel that Yaevinn meant him no harm and only wished to help.

Gently, he placed two fingers to the side of the fugitive's neck and carefully pressed just under the back of the jaw, checking the pulse. He avoided touching the markings for now, but the lightest prickle brushed his fingertips all the same. It was a pleasant sensation, akin to running fingers along a cat's smooth coat. Only there was no hair that should produce the charge. Only hot skin and sweat that had gathered on the run and through the fight. The impulse must have come from the lyrium scars then. And it gave Yaevinn hope. If he felt no pain during the contact, the stranger shouldn't either. Not on account of his healing magic, that is.

“Be not afraid of my magic. I will heal you,” he promised in a soft, soft voice, keeping its cadence slow, its timbre warm like a summer night. He knew not whether the fugitive understood the common tongue, and so he said the same in a halted Tevene, “Noli timere mei magicae. Et ecce sanavi te.”

With that, he reached with his free hand for the straps of the man's chest piece. First he had to remove the source of pressure that pushed the broken ribs against the lung.

 


	3. The Eighth Escape

**VIGIL'S KEEP, THE MONTH OF GUARDIAN, 9:33 DRAGON AGE**

 

“I think... I stepped in Pounce's shit,” Senior Warden Nathaniel Howe announced, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “That beastling of yours drops it in unexpected places on purpose, I swear,” he continued, trying to clean his boot in the nearest puddle.

“We happen to sit on a formidable pile of bones and shit,” Giom du Plessis, the Warden-Commander of Ferelden and Arl of Amaranthine observed, watching Nathaniel's frustrated effort. “I doubt Pounce's contributions to the state of our affairs make any significant difference in the grand scheme of things.”

Nathaniel left the puddle alone, in favor of a heap of stones. Scraping the soiled sole of his boot against it, he clearly opted to assume stoic silence in his suffering.

_A tomcat is a tomcat. He marks his place,_ Giom thought, carefully skirting the reeking smear in the mud. They should have already resigned on fastidiousness, but both he and Nathaniel were men of noble birth, men who liked their surroundings clean. It was an impossible dream in Vigil's Keep when it rained. Now it poured. There must have been a waterfall somewhere in the skies, and the fort had the misfortune of standing right beneath. The downpour smelled and felt fresh. But as soon as its cool water touched the ground, it lost pleasing qualities. Dirty-brown rivulets were running all over the outer courtyard, carrying mud, bird droppings, horse piss and manure, as well as any leakage from the shit pits.

Giom made his way over to Nathaniel. The impressive heap of granite stones rearing before them should have turned into a wall long ago. But a jagged hole still gaped in the old wall, the remains of which crumbled every day a little more as the exposed masonry suffered under whims of inclement weather. A hand of rainwater stood in a wooden tub nearby, covering a layer of abandoned fresh mortar. Stonemasons were not in sight. It made no sense to try to mend walls when the skies wept. They wept oft and profusely as Giom had found. “The repairs won't ever be finished with these rains,” he huffed. “Must it always rain?”

“Only for six months every year.” Nathaniel sniffed, then wiped his face into his sleeve. In vain. The night-blue woolens of his Grey Warden gear were already drenched to begin with, and no later than he dropped his arm, the rain wet his face again. It was a handsome face, noble in its features.

But it was not the face that entered Giom's fantasies at night. “We should be grateful that it leaves only six months for rebellions,” he said just to say something, just to banish the taste of guilt and regret from his mouth. But his bearskin cloak grew heavier around his shoulders all the same, weighing him down, not on account of all the water it had soaked in. He had slain the great gray beast in the Dales, long before he had left sunny Orlais for wet Ferelden. And perhaps he should have stayed in his sun-kissed homeland. Perhaps it would have been for the better, no matter what the Order had said.

“Five,” Nathaniel corrected. “They need a month to bring in the harvest.”

Nathaniel and Anders, they had always made light of grave matters. In those early days, he had been like them. But the early days were gone, and the days that had followed had changed him. “I find your views... cheering,” he said nonetheless, grateful for his friend's efforts to lift his spirits.

“Oh, _it is_ working then.” Nathaniel flashed him a rare grin. “Being quiet and stoic is my way to get a lot of action as Oghren puts it. I am in no need for a challenger in that field. What about you return to your playful self, hm? Surely you must have merely misplaced it. We should look around.” Regardless the teasing, Nathaniel's gray eyes looked at him with unconcealed concern.

And Giom knew what his friend saw. Physically, he was still the same man who had come to this keep twenty months ago. He still stood a little bit more than six feet tall. His slender body remained well-muscled, his flesh taut and hard. He still wielded his daggers with deadly swiftness in fight. His black hair still curled in the same unruly way, its ringlets spilling around his narrow face and onto his shoulders. A short-trimmed beard still framed the firm line of his jaw. His sculpted eyebrows still bestowed a strict appearance onto him. But easy smiles no longer graced his mouth to soften his looks. His mouth had a hard cast to it now, even when he jested. Long ago, when he had been but a callow youth, women had told him oft that he had eyes the color of woodland honey. They had enjoyed his blushes and even his inevitable hasty retreats from their presence. They had never learned why none of them had made a man of him in her bed. He had lost his innocence much later, with a man. Now he was not a callow youth anymore. He had seen thirty-two summers come and go, and his innocence had been lost in many more ways than one. The last part of it had died but nine months ago, and it had taken the softness out of his eyes. There was no sweet woodland honey in their look now, only bitter, bottomless, dark peatbogs. And the change worried his friend.

“A peasant rebellion is no laughing matter,” Giom said to avoid further talk on that subject.

“And there you are mistaken,” answered Nathaniel. “It looks strangely amusing if you consider it with some dispassion. You had given smallfolk food and they turned up with flails the next time they came. It makes one wonder: had the bread not been to their liking? What would they have done, had you fed them pancakes?”

Giom snorted. “Orlesian pancakes? You must be fond of _pitchforks_ and flails.”

“We Fereldans store pitchforks in trees. Pancakes are hardly a reason to retrieve them,” Nathaniel jested.

There would be another rebellion. Soon, rabble would gather before the gates again, for they would rather have a Fereldan noble for their arl. Even one who would let them starve and would not protect them from darkspawn. In many eyes, anyone was better than a hated Orlesian. Not all of the locals were ungrateful wretches. Some liked him well. But enough were more than willing to rise against him without the slightest provocation. And he had a fort with holes in the walls because he had been just enough to protect the city when the darkspawn had come. Justice had approved then. He wondered what the spirit would say now. Did it even matter all that much? There were holes in the walls and the weather remained abysmal and when the rain stopped pouring there was the certainty that sooner or later blood would spill out of veins. But for now, they could jest about it all. He supposed there was some comfort in that. “Peculiar Fereldan customs never cease to amaze me,” he said, shaking his head.

It was when the watchman called down from the watchtower, “Commander! Six men approaching the gates!”

“In this weather, they must have a pressing reason to drag their sore bones here,” Nathaniel said.

Giom only nodded, starting for the gate. If peasants were coming to tell him what he must do, he would snap. His patience with ignorance had its limits.

But the men who were dragging themselves up the muddy road were clad in gray and blue, just like him. Grey Wardens. Even through the screen of rain, across the remaining distance, he recognized their leader. Jean-Marc Straud, his friend of many years, walked with considerably less spring to his step than Giom remembered, but the long gait was still his. “Winch up the portcullis,” Giom commanded the guards.

The rust-covered iron moved with sharp screeches of protest. It did not like to be raised, and it took the guards longer than it should to accomplish the task. The gate was in dire need of better maintenance, but for now was losing its battle for attention to more urgent repairs.

Giom slipped under its spikes as soon as it was high enough to let him pass. “Monsieur Straud!” he called out, making haste to meet his friend. There was no need for formalities between them after all those long years of their friendship. Addressing one another with their title after a time spent apart was a tease, a private jest.

“Monsieur du Plessis!” Jean-Marc answered the call, in a voice hoarse with weariness. Still, he pushed himself into a faster pace.

A moment more and they were crushing one another in a hard hug.

“Jean-Marc,” Giom gasped, pressed hard against his friend's steel breastplate. He himself did not wear his full armor, only his woolens and surcoat under the cloak. Drenched as his clothes were, they disagreed with the squeeze and released rivulets of water onto his chest and belly.

“Giom.” Jean-Marc laughed, letting go of him. “You are a sight for sore eyes.”

“This ruin is,” he teased. “Admit it.”

“You have me there.” And it was an obvious truth. Jean-Marc's azure-blue-and-silver surcoat, a reflection of Giom's own, had plastered itself against the padded night-blue woolens beneath. He wore no cloak to shield himself from the elements, and his clothes were surely soaked even under the steel parts of his armor. Even his impressive mustache drooped, giving him the distinct looks of an irritated, near-drowned walrus. If walruses can drown, that is. His five men looked no better. Only a tall, dark haired youth still carried himself with some pride to his step. This one had an uncommon endurance to him. Or an uncommon level of pride. Giom thought him some twenty-two summers old, and sensed the Taint from his veins. _When will we start recruiting children?_ he wondered. By all means, he should be glad to see such a fine recruit, but he was not. He would much rather see the lad kiss a wench, have some dalliance, take his dearheart for his wife. With the Maker's willing, get her heavy with his children. Was it so much to ask for a peaceful life? Was it selfish to regret that all such little happiness had been taken from the man when he was still so young? Giom had been young too when he had Joined. So had been Jean-Marc. Most recruits were taken young. And it was all the more unfair.

“You are welcome at Vigil's Keep,” he said with feeling, waving the party in. “What brings you here?” he asked only later, once they were all on their way to the keep.

“Felicisima Armada,” Jean-Marc explained. “Pirates are blockading all ports of Orlais.”

“The execution of Captain Revaud was not to their liking?” Giom wagered. “A shame. I hear it was such a dazzling spectacle, with masks, affected speech and all.”

“Raiders like to play their game sans masks and affected speech. Only cannons and daggers,” Nathaniel pointed out.

“Outrageous for the lack of subtlety perhaps, but deadly like the Grand Game itself their play is. They turn the seas red with their squabbles, but touch one of theirs, and all of them are at your throat.” Jean-Marc shrugged. “The dazzling spectacle of Revaud's death will cost the Empress many frigates if she attempts to lift the blockade.”

“A bad time to bring in recruits,” Nathaniel remarked. “With the Blight over–”

“We were ambushed in the Deep Roads,” Jean-Marc interrupted curtly. “More than half of new men didn't make it.”

There was nothing more to say about it. Recruits should not have entered the Deep Roads in the first place, but it was clear to Giom that his friend had not led them there on his own volition. He must have received commands. He glanced at him with quiet sympathy and understanding. Clarel de Chanson, the Warden-Commander of Orlais was a demanding task master. She did not take kindly to insubordination. The Wardens under her command rarely dared to voice a disagreement with her decisions. And his friend had the misfortune to be under her command.

“Rotten luck.” Jean-Marc spat on the ground. “But not all had turned out for ill. I would have a private word with you, Giom.”

They had reached the inner portcullis meantime. A flight of stairs to walk up, and then they would enjoy the comforting warmth of the main tower. Giom saw the weariness in his friend's slow movements. Jean-Marc was in no condition to keep going. Or even to stand on his feet much longer. The private word had to wait. “Unless it is about a darkspawn horde just out of our sight, it can wait until you and yours are dry, rested, and fed,” he said, and turned his head to Nathaniel. “Nathaniel, would you tell Seneschal Garevel to make the arrangements? With haste, please.”

“Commander.” Nathaniel sketched a playful quarter-bow. It would not do, had his commander been Clarel de Chanson. But Giom waved him off with the same playfulness, pretended as it was. Light feelings just did not come to him easily anymore.

It was long after the supper that he and Jean-Marc retreated into his private quarters and sank into chairs close to the blazing fire in the hearth. Only a pitcher of dry red wine and two goblets stood on the ground between them. The darkened room, the crackling flames, the wine, it all invited them to relax and rest. Giom hoped for a drinking night in a pleasant company as he poured.

“What I am going to tell you is bound not to be to your liking, Giom,” Jean-Marc said, stretching his long legs to the warmth. “But for our friendship, do hear me out.”

“So much for a pleasant drinking night,” Giom grumbled, but waved a hand at him to continue.

“You are one of the three candidates for the next First Warden,” Jean-Marc started. “Deny it as you will, you are the best choice.”

Wine forgotten, Giom rubbed his face with both hands. He was so damn tired. The work of a Warden-Commander was never done, and he saw no reason why he should try to climb even higher and gather more unrewarding duties onto his plate. “I have no such ambition.”

“You lack the ambition, but even you must see the need.” Jean-Marc reached for his cup, and regarded it with a frown. “The First Warden rarely attends to the matters of the Order, it is known. The Order has fallen in disarray. It is in a dire need of a new leader.”

Giom repressed a huff of frustration. His friend would not let this go. The best that he could do was to get drunk. Quickly. Then the words would be more bearable. With that commendable intention, he grabbed his goblet and swallowed a couple of drafts before he said, “And you are telling me this because...”

“Because when the time comes, the choice will be between you and Clarel,” his friend answered with a grim tightness around his mouth. “Dernheim is but the First's puppet, he shan't gather enough support amongst our brethren.”

“You have no love for Clarel, and rightly so,” Giom acknowledged. “She deprived you of your chance for revenge on the murderers of your closest kin. It is not a deed that a man should forgive. I do not take your feelings on the matter lightly. But I will not challenge her only so she does not become the First Warden.”

“You do not understand.” Jean-Marc shook his head. “This is not about me and my slain kin, not even about the murderers who escaped justice thanks to her, possibly unknowing, help. This is about the future of the Order. Clarel is both ambitious and ruthless. She stands steadfast against the Blight, I give her that it is a noble calling. Yet, it is in the name of this noble calling that she would commit most deplorable deeds. You know firsthand how she sees and treats her fellow Wardens.”

There was a truth to Jean-Marc's views, and Giom voiced it, “As pieces to be used and sacrificed when need arises.”

“With a leader such as she is, the Order can never be reformed.” Jean-Marc shook his head again, the gesture tense, full of repressed anger. “If we keep invoking the right of conscription on unwilling recruits, if we impose the death sentence on innocents, whether they die during their Joining or when they answer their Calling... we are no better than murderers, Giom. Murderers hiding behind a noble purpose, but murderers all the same.” His voice grew laden with frustration and shame, and it took a moment before he composed himself enough to continue, “Great men desert from our ranks. I look at the Hero of Ferelden, and I understand why. I understand why he has forsaken the Order and forges his own destiny. A forced man owes his captors no loyalty.” He turned his head away from Giom and stared into the dancing flames.

Giom stayed silent. Jean-Marc considered himself a forced man too, although it was his own honor that had trapped him thus. No, not his honor. The Grand Game, and a few words that had given him no other option than to join the Wardens if he wished to keep his honor unsullied. _Mon ami, we are seldom free to follow the passions of our hearts,_ he thought, his own eyes dropped to his lap in order to give his friend a moment of privacy.

After a bit, Jean-Marc cleared his throat, and Giom looked at him again. The strain was gone from the man's features, but a fire of certainty burned in his eyes as he leaned closer to him, imploring, “But with a leader such as you, with a leader accomplished and fair and compassionate, great men and women would be inspired to join us and stay. You do not see your people as pieces to be used and sacrificed.”

_You stubborn, stubborn man._ “You have the truth of it. But look around.” Giom swept the surroundings with a broad gesture of his hand. His was the best chamber in the tower, but even here he smelled the faint odor of ever-present must, felt the moisture that crept inside through walls damaged during the siege. It would take years to heal all wounds of the place, if it ever could be truly healed. “The fort lies in ruin, and Ferelden is sucked dry of its manpower. We are sorely undermanned here, and recruits do not exactly line up by our rusty gates.” Done with his tirade, he settled back in the seat. “Even if I wanted to challenge Clarel when the time comes, I will not have enough votes.”

“You have defeated The Architect and The Mother,” Jean-Marc reminded him, undisturbed by the pressing cares of Amaranthine. “Wardens in all of Thedas look up to you.”

“You forget the Hero,” Giom returned with equal stubbornness. “They should look up to him.”

“Many do. But Dafydd Sabrae has left the Order, on permission of King Alistair himself. He cannot become the new First Warden. And his admirers will be the first ones to vote for you. Others will too, unless Clarel presents them with a greater achievement.”

“Spit it out, Jean-Marc.” Giom ran a hand through his hair. “The night is old, and I am in no mood for intrigue.”

“As you wish.” Jean-Marc refilled his goblet and drank deeply before he said, “After the ambush in the Deep Roads, we were scrambling for the surface, and the fate had us cross paths with survivors of yet another expedition. It had not been fielded by the Order, I believe, but they had a Grey Warden with them. Anders.”

_Anders is dead! And it is my fault!_ Giom wanted to shout, but not a sound passed through his throat. A hollow ache sat there, clogging the path. How could his friend torment him thus?

“A lad who had contracted the Taint traveled with them,” Jean-Marc continued, searching his eyes. “The tall one. I saw you watch him by the gate. Joining saved his life, you know. He remains wary of us though, and every time I ask, he insists that Anders is in Kirkwall on a secret Grey Warden mission.”

Giom's thoughts raced. _Could he have survived? Impossible, no. Improbable, yes. But you know his face. You saw him here when you came to invite me to Val Royeaux for talks with Clarel._ His hands wanted to shake, and he had to grip the cup tight not to spill the wine. “Yes,” he croaked. “Anders is there on a mission.”

Jean-Marc laid his cup on the floor. It made a clack entirely too loud for Giom's ears. He winced at the sound.

His friend tilted his head to a side, no doubt considering his reaction. “Giom, we have known one another for long years,” he started, softly at that. “When the raven came to Val Royeaux with the word that his patrol had been lost to darkspawn in the forest of Amaranthine, you looked Death incarnate. Grief carved in your ashen face. On the voyage back, you would not talk to anyone for a fortnight. You would not have eaten either, had I not forced you. The last time I had seen you in such a state had been when your mother had passed on.” He sighed, and reached for the goblet once again. But he merely cradled it in his hand, staring into its depths, as he said, “You did not have to cry for me to see that you were mourning for the man, so do not try to tell me now that he is in Kirkwall on a mission.” With that he raised the goblet to his lips.

Giom watched him drink, his own throat parched and sore. He left his cup untouched; now he could not swallow anything. “The lad,” he said. “Can he be trusted?”

“Carver Hawke is his name. He has maintained the story so far,” Jean-Marc replied. “I have no reason to believe that he would ever change it. According to him, Anders joined a certain Bartrand Tethras' expedition to advance the said mission, the details of which had never been revealed to Carver. As far as I am concerned, the account is true. And you have received the word about a primeval thaig which the expedition has found from Anders, not from me.”

It was a lot to take in. The world was spinning as if Giom was drunk. But he was not drunk, and Anders was alive. Somewhere in Kirkwall. And then there were the names of men Giom did not know, the places he had not seen, the possible consequences of all that had been so abruptly revealed. But one thing he knew for certain, Jean-Marc was giving him a chance to set Anders free. Free as the man had always wanted to be. “Merci bien, mon ami,” he said, his voice choked with feeling, his hand briefly closing over Jean-Marc's. “You have done me a great kindness.”

“Gladly,” his friend assured him. “I trust you know what to do.”

“At dawn, a raven shall fly to Weisshaupt,” Giom replied when he composed himself. Lies he would tell to keep Anders safe. Honor was not everything that made a man. If he had to choose between Anders and his honor, he knew where his loyalty lay. “The First Warden shall duly be informed of the find,” he continued firmly, “and I shall petition him to field our own expedition.”

“One led by your forces, yes.” Jean-Marc nodded. “I must inform Clarel of the ancient thaig as well. But we travel slowly. It shall take us three months to reach Adamantine. Alas, our home-bound raven that we loosed before boarding a ship in Kirkwall and that carried the word must have died along the way. Pirates have had it for dinner, most like.”

Giom let out a strained snort of laughter. “You are awfully determined to see me become the First Warden.”

A genuine smile lifted Jean-Marc's impressive mustache. “Indeed, mon ami. Indeed.”

Much later that night, Giom du Plessis, the Warden-Commander of Ferelden and Arl of Amaranthine sat down by his desk and opened the Gray Book that had been found in the depths of the Soldier's Peak. The ancient leather-bound piece held together only by the grace of magic. Its bindings damaged, the leather wrinkled and crisscrossed with cracks, it somehow resisted ravages of time enough to still be of use. In its pages, it kept the history of every Grey Warden of Ferelden, from the year 9:34 Glory when the Soldier's Peak had been dedicated to the Maker to the year 7:5 Storm when the records abruptly ended with the death of Warden-Commander Sophia Dryden slain during her rebellion against the Crown. For centuries, the book had lain forgotten, untouched, until Dafydd Sabrae, the Hero of Ferelden, had ended its quiet sleep. King Alistair himself had written the entries for the years between 9:10 Dragon when his father had permitted the Order to return to Ferelden to 9:31 Dragon when the Archdemon Urthemiel had been slain and the Fifth Blight thus ended by Dafydd's hand. Those records were not precise, recreated as they were from memory of one man and from the tales he had heard, but they were the best that could be done so the names and history of men who had served the Order then would not be entirely forgotten. In the month of Justinian of the year 9:31 Dragon, the book had passed into Giom's hands. His was the duty to truthfully record the lives, deeds, and deaths of Wardens under his command. And yet, he had never brought himself to end Anders' record with the final entry. Now the page gaped almost blank at him, the parchment discolored by centuries. He read the few words in silence, with a sad smile on his face.

_He Joined on the seventeenth of the month of Justinian, 9:31 Dragon._

_On the ninth of the month of Haring, 9:31 Dragon, during the siege of Vigil's Keep, he heroically held back hundreds of assaulting darkspawn with his magic._

It was all. Whoever would later read the few words would know nothing of Giom's memories. They would learn about Anders' bravery, yet naught about his charm and wit. Naught about the unquenchable thirst for freedom. And naught about his beautiful face that entered Giom's fantasies. He remembered its dreamy softness framed with golden hair. The hair that had the color of old gold. Warm, almost brown but not quite so. Once, he had chanced upon Anders while he was washing his hair. And before his inner eye, Giom saw the scene all anew, the wet strands dripping water and all. The sweet man from his fantasies smiled at him.

He smiled back, dipped his quill in an inkwell, and wrote:

_On the twenty-eighth of the month of Wintermarch, 9:32 Dragon, he received a mission to research an antidote against the Taint and was given the permission to travel Thedas on his discretion, as the research demanded._

He added a little wine to the ink to make it slightly change color so the following entries would not all look written at the same day.

_On the fifteenth of the month of Bloomingtide, 9:32 Dragon he was mistakenly considered missing in action._

A trickle of wine later:

_On the twelfth of the month of Justinian, 9:32 Dragon Age he reported having reached the destination required by his research in the Free Marches._

He rose from the desk, gathered some ash in the hearth and dropped it into the inkwell. For a few moments, he stirred the mixture vigorously, then continued forging the entries.

_On the tenth of the month of Guardian, 9:33 Dragon he reported the find of an ancient thaig in the Deep Roads, one that possibly predates the First Blight._

Lies but for the grain of truth regarding his disappearance. Lie for him, Giom would. History would care little about Anders' fate, but he did. Perhaps, had he taken Anders with him to Val Royeaux, the man would still be here. And fantasies would not be only fantasies. The fate had willed it differently. Only Anders' tomcat Pounce kept him company at night. Formerly known as Ser Pounce A Lot, the tomcat had been retrieved from a woman in the city of Amaranthine, and since then he had grown into a veritable terror of all birds in Vigil's Keep. Giom liked him well, but Pounce could not bring more than a brief smile onto his mouth, try mightily as he did with his exploits.

Still, Anders was not lost or dead. Giom was not responsible for his death. The memories of him that he held locked away in his heart, they would stay, even when the man was gone. It was more than he could have hoped for mere hours ago. Guilt would no longer eat at him. Regrets might never leave, but he could live with regrets.

_Fare you well, may your freedom last and your fortune be good to you. You have made your eighth escape,_ he thought, staring at the lies written in his own confident hand. So long as he remained the Warden-Commander, nobody would ever learn that Anders deserted from the Order.

And he did not want to think that the man would need to escape at least one more time if he were to be truly free. The Calling was waiting. It was content to wait for years, sometimes for decades. It kept a silent vigil until the day when it hummed its haunting song. Whether it was possible to avoid hearing that last tune, Giom knew not. He wished there was an antidote to its Call. If someone could find it, it was Anders. A gifted healer. But the man knew naught of the mission that he had never received.

A quiet rustle sounded from shadows as Pounce made his way inside through a window open ajar. Moments later, the tomcat leaped onto the open book, imprinting his wet paws on the parchment with no regard for history.

_It is fitting that his page is to forever bear your signature._ “Yes, he is alive, you ruffian,” Giom whispered under his breath, and gently tugged a pigeon feather out of the tomcat's mouth. “Been in the pigeon loft again? What will the cooks say, hm?” Purring, Pounce butted his hand, and Giom obliged, scratching him gently under the chin. _Perhaps Anders has nine lives, like you,_ he thought. _Perhaps, he can cheat death itself when the time comes._

 


End file.
